Magnetic Resonance Imaging for Tracking of Cells and Agents Targeted to Bone Fracture

Date
2015-04-29
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Abstract
Regenerative medicine is likely to play a major role in the treatment of musculoskeletal diseases. Stem cell therapies could be used to restore damaged or diseased tissues by contributing to the healing process. Additionally, bone targeted nanoparticles could be of great use in this field, as they can be used to deliver therapies or to image an injury site. In order to evaluate and monitor new regenerative therapies in preclinical models over time, a non-invasive in vivo imaging tool is needed. Use of such an imaging method will enable testing new cell therapies in bone. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) holds considerable promise for this purpose. Considering that it is a non-invasive and non ionizing method makes it well-suited for repeated measurements studies. Initially, we optimized an MRI protocol for visualization of bone injuries, and then we compared the optimized MRI protocol with µCT as the gold standard for bone imaging. We found that MRI offers several advantages over µCT, including that it visualized soft tissue, edema, therapeutic biomaterials, and is especially useful when ionizing radiation is to be avoided. Subsequently, we used MRI to assess materials used in this study such as bone targeted nanoparticles, contrast agents and stem cell scaffolds. After establishing the MRI protocol, we labelled-differentiated ESCs, and then transplanted them in vivo for MR tracking. The results showed that MRI detected the labelled cells in vivo that under some conditions the MRI could detect migration of the differentiated ESC’s to remote site of injury. The findings were validated by histology and immunohistochemistry. To our knowledge, this is the first study to track cells in bone fracture using MRI. Based on the results of this research, future studies can use the developed cell tracking model for testing the effectiveness of novel cell therapies that promote bone repair.
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Keywords
Medicine and Surgery
Citation
Taha, M. (2015). Magnetic Resonance Imaging for Tracking of Cells and Agents Targeted to Bone Fracture (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/26810