MRI Monitors Cell Therapy Transplants

Collaboration between researchers in the United States and the Netherlands has produced a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique that can detect implanted cells that have been labeled with iron oxide particles and trace their movement within the patient's body.

The success of therapies based on cell transplantation will depend in part on how accurately the cells have been delivered to the target location. In dendritic cell therapy, in particular, delivery and subsequent migration of cells to regional lymph nodes is essential for effective stimulation of the immune system.

Investigators at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD, USA) and Radboud University Medical Center (Nijmegen, The Netherlands) removed dendritic cells from a group of melanoma patients and allowed the cells to internalize magnetic probes composed of iron oxide particles. The cells were then returned to the patient who had been the source of the cells, and MRI monitored their placement.

Results published in the November 2005 issue of Nature Biotechnology showed that in contrast to radioactive tracer imaging, MRI imaging allowed assessment of the accuracy of dendritic cell delivery and of inter- and intra-nodal cell migration patterns. MRI cell tracking using iron oxides appeared to be clinically safe and well suited to monitor cellular therapy in humans.

"Although dendritic cell therapy is used in clinical trials to treat patients with melanoma, in this study we wanted to see whether the magnetically labeled cells could be tracked by MRI, to study their migratory behavior in more detail,” said senior author Dr. Carl Figdor, professor of tumor immunology at the Radboud University Medical Center. "We were very pleased that they showed up clearly. With the anatomic information from the MRI, we could see precisely where they were--inside or outside of the lymph nodes.”




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