19F MRI tracking of dendritic cells in a novel migration assays

F. BONETTO; M. SRINIVAS; B. WEIGELIN; L.J. CRUZ; A. HEERSCHAP; C. G. FIGDOR; J. DE VRIES

Estocolmo

Conferencia; 18th Scientific Meeting and Exhibition of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine; 2010

In the present study we showed that 19F-CSI can be used to track and quantify cell migration in opaque scaffold assays. The number of cells of which the starting cell layer was composed of was similar to the typical 15 million cells bolus injection in patients [2] and the migration rates were measured to be in the order of 2%, similar to clinical results [2]. Thus, this assay seems suitable to simulate in vivo clinical conditions, giving the option to analyze the problems involved in DC migration. The longitudinal study showed that cell migration stopped after about 10 hours. Possible causes for this behavior are cell death, for example due to lack of oxygen and nutrients and/or a progressive chemokine gradient reduction.We have demonstrated the utility of the novel assay to study cell migration using MRI. In particular, the assay can also be applied to opaque tissue samples.