About the Authors

Wen Li

Contributed equally to this work with: Wen Li, Akico Okuda

Affiliation Laboratory of Tumor Immunology and Cell Therapy, Hyogo College of Medicine, Hyogo, Japan

Akico Okuda

Contributed equally to this work with: Wen Li, Akico Okuda

Affiliations Laboratory of Tumor Immunology and Cell Therapy, Hyogo College of Medicine, Hyogo, Japan, Department of Pathology, Hyogo College of Medicine, Hyogo, Japan

Hideyuki Yamamoto

Affiliation Laboratory of Tumor Immunology and Cell Therapy, Hyogo College of Medicine, Hyogo, Japan

Kyosuke Yamanishi

Affiliations Laboratory of Tumor Immunology and Cell Therapy, Hyogo College of Medicine, Hyogo, Japan, Department of Neuropsychiatry, Hyogo College of Medicine, Hyogo, Japan

Nobuyuki Terada

Affiliation Department of Pathology, Hyogo College of Medicine, Hyogo, Japan

Hiromichi Yamanishi

Affiliation Hirakata General Hospital for Developmental Disorders, Hirakata, Osaka, Japan

Yoshimasa Tanaka

Affiliation Center for Innovation in Immunoregulative Technology and Therapeutics, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

Haruki Okamura

haruoka@hyo-med.ac.jp

Affiliation Laboratory of Tumor Immunology and Cell Therapy, Hyogo College of Medicine, Hyogo, Japan

Competing Interests

The authors have read the journal's policy and have the following conflicts: The study was funded in part by Astellas Pharma Inc. Recombinant human IL-18 and ZOL were kindly provided by GlaxoSmithKline plc (Research Triangle Park, NC) and Novartis AG (Basel, Switzerland), respectively. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and material.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: HO WL. Performed the experiments: WL AO KY NT H. Yamanishi YT. Analyzed the data: WL H. Yamamoto. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: YT. Wrote the paper: HO WL. Revised the manuscript: NT YT. Discussions: HO WL AO H. Yamamoto KY NT H. Yamanishi YT.