The DOI matches its Crossref record; 53 of the 53 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Quantitative Magnetic Particle Imaging Monitors the Transplantation, Biodistribution, and Clearance of Stem Cells In Vivo
Open accessAbstract
Stem cell therapies have enormous potential for treating many debilitating diseases, including heart failure, stroke and traumatic brain injury. For maximal efficacy, these therapies require targeted cell delivery to specific tissues followed by successful cell engraftment. However, targeted delivery remains an open challenge. As one example, it is common for intravenous deliveries of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) to become entrapped in lung microvasculature instead of the target tissue. Hence, a robust, quantitative imaging method would be essential for developing efficacious cell therapies. Here we show that Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI), a novel technique that directly images iron-oxide nanoparticle-tagged cells, can longitudinally monitor and quantify MSC administration in vivo. MPI offers near-ideal image contrast, depth penetration, and robustness; these properties make MPI both ultra-sensitive and linearly quantitative. Here, we imaged, for the first time, the dynamic trafficking of intravenous MSC administrations using MPI. Our results indicate that labeled MSC injections are immediately entrapped in lung tissue and then clear to the liver within one day, whereas standard iron oxide particle (Resovist) injections are immediately taken up by liver and spleen. Longitudinal MPI-CT imaging also indicated a clearance half-life of MSC iron oxide labels in the liver at 4.6 days. Finally, our ex vivo MPI biodistribution measurements of iron in liver, spleen, heart, and lungs after injection showed excellent agreement (R(2) = 0.943) with measurements from induction coupled plasma spectrometry. These results demonstrate that MPI offers strong utility for noninvasively imaging and quantifying the systemic distribution of cell therapies and other therapeutic agents.
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Citations
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Ota, S., Yasuga, H., Akagawa, T., Kurashina, Y., Nakazawa, K., & Kikuchi, S. (2025) · Biotechnology and Bioengineering · doi:10.1002/bit.70057
“In addition to individual cell manipulation, magnetic labeling of living cells creates opportunities for numerous biomedical applications, such as tracking by magnetic resonance imaging (Wilhelm and Gazeau 2008) and magnetic particle imaging (Zheng et al. 2016).”
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“MPI has demonstrated potential for in vivo applications such as cell tracking [2], [3], vascular and perfusion imaging [4], targeted drug delivery [5], [6], and magnetic hyperthermia [7], [8].”
The Peculiar Effect of Scanning Trajectory Pattern Density on MPI-Reconstructed Image Quality
Duc, T., Kubasheva, A., Molnár, F., & Pham, T. T. (2025) · IEEE Access · doi:10.1109/access.2025.3638887
“Recent experimental MPI studies have demonstrated significant advances in biomedical applications, including vascular imaging [8], cell tracking [9], and interventional procedures [10], highlighting the growing clinical potential of this technique.”
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“…et al 2017, Yu et al 2017, Cooley et al 2018, Israel 2018), neuroimaging (Herb et al 2020, Shi et al 2023), cell tracking (Connell et al 2015, Zheng et al 2016, Lemaster et al 2018, Song et al 2018), and interventional surgical navigation (Vogel et al 2023, Wegner et al 2024, Guo et al 2025).”
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“…MPI imaging was demonstrated in a range of preclinical applications, such as angiography [17,18], and perfusion [19]; cancer imaging [20], cell tracking [21,22], hyperthermia [23,24], and real-time tracking of interventional instruments: e.g., balloon catheters in cardiovascular procedures [25,26].”
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Semi-Wavelet Attention Transformer-Based MPI Reconstruction Algorithm
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“These include stem cell tracking, inflammatory imaging in traumatic brain injury, lung perfusion imaging, gastrointestinal bleeding detection, and tumor imaging [1].”
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“Due to these features, MPI has been widely used in preclinical imaging, particularly in cancer detection[1], vascular imaging[2], and cellular tracking[3] studies, providing a novel approach for early disease diagnosis and functional imaging.”
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Size and Zinc Substitution Govern the MPI and MRI Performance of Ferrite Nanoparticle Tracers
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Metadata
- Authors
- Zheng, B., von See, M. P., Yu, E., Gunel, B., Lu, K., Vazin, T., Schaffer, D. V., Goodwill, P. W., & Conolly, S. M.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
- Corresponding author
- Zheng, Bo
- ORCID
- Venue
- Theranostics
- Publisher
- Ivyspring International Publisher
- Published
- 2016
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 291-301
- ISSN
- 1838-7640 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4737718
- OpenAlex
- W2275153700
- Cited by
- 322
- References
- 53
- Citations by year
- 2026: 18 · 2025: 25 · 2024: 29 · 2023: 36 · 2022: 37 · 2021: 35 · 2020: 34 · 2019: 30 · 2018: 30 · 2017: 35 · 2016: 13
- FWCI
- 12.88
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nc
- Locations
- Theranostics (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- tub.dok (Hamburg University of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- TUHH Open Research
- Funders
- W. M. Keck Foundation (009323)
- ACT Government
- Siebel Scholars Foundation
- National Institutes of Health (009323, NIH-R01)
- National Institute of Mental Health (R24MH106053)
- National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (R01EB019458, R01EB013689)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Characterization and Applications of Magnetic Nanoparticles
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Cell Biology › Mesenchymal stem cell research
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging › Advanced MRI Techniques and Applications
- Keywords
- magnetic particle imaging, mesenchymal stem cells, stem cell transplantation, cell biodistribution, cell clearance, stem cell therapy
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Diagnostic Imaging, Female, Ferric Compounds, Humans, Magnetics, Rats, Inbred F344, Staining and Labeling, Tissue Distribution, Mesenchymal Stem Cell Transplantation, Mice, Nanoparticles, Administration, Intravenous
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