Labeling and Detection of Marrow Derived Mesenchymal Stromal Cells using Magnetic Resonance Imaging

• Main Author: Tarulli, Emidio
• Other Authors: Mikulis, David J.
• Format: Others
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: MRI; MPIO; stem cells; superparamagnetic iron oxide; stroke; 0541
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/17229

Stem cell therapies hold great promise for diseases such as stroke, where few effective treatment options exist. Clinical translation of experimental stem cell therapies requires the ability to monitor delivery and behaviour of cells non-invasively in-vivo with clinical imaging modalities such as MRI. This thesis presents the translation of established methods for labelling and imaging stem cells with specialized MRI systems to a more clinically relevant setting. A methodology for harvesting and labelling a cell population containing stem cells with iron oxide for detection with a clinical MRI system is presented and single cell detection is demonstrated in-vitro. The feasibility of detecting iron oxide labelled stem cells intravenously delivered in a rat model of stroke is tested. Results demonstrate that while MRI is highly sensitive to the presence and distribution of iron oxide containing cells in-vivo the true origin of these cells remains ambiguous with the current methodology.