Nanoparticles based stem cell tracking in regenerative medicine.
Stem cell therapies offer great potentials in the treatment for a wide range of diseases and conditions. With so many stem cell replacement therapies going through clinical trials currently, there is a great need to understand the mechanisms behind a successful therapy, and one of the critical points of discovering them is to track stem cell migration, proliferation and differentiation in vivo. To be of most use tracking methods should ideally be non-invasive, high resolution and allow tracking in three dimensions. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is one of the ideal methods, but requires a suitable contrast agent to be loaded to the cells to be tracked, and one of the most wide-spread in stem cell tracking is a group of agents known as magnetic nanoparticles. This review will explore the current use of magnetic nanoparticles in developing and performing stem cell therapies, and will investigate their potential limitations and the future directions magnetic nanoparticle tracking is heading in.
School of Dentistry, College of Biomedical and Life Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF14 4XY, UK.
Matthew
M
Edmundson
Nguyen Tk
NT
Thanh
Bing
B
Song
D000818:Animals; D058948:Cell Tracking; D003287:Contrast Media / Q000737:chemistry; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D051379:Mice; D053758:Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry; D019636:Neurodegenerative Diseases / Q000628:therapy; D044968:Regenerative Medicine / Q000379:methods*; D033581:Stem Cell Transplantation; D013234:Stem Cells / Q000737:chemistry*
D003287:Contrast Media
nanoparticles; stem cell therapies