19F MRI tracking of dendritic cells in a scaffold migration assay

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

Utrecht, Holanda

Congreso; 4th Meeting of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine Benelux Chapter; 2010

Dendritic cell migration is monitored and quantified by using 19F-Chemical Shift Spectroscoypic imaging (CSI) in a novel migration assay. 3D scaffolds specially designed to mimic biological tissue are used in this assay. The particular layered structure of the assay allows to assess cell migration and to perform the control experiment simultaneously. Cells were labeled with a perfluorocarbon compound. Our results demonstrate that 19F-CSI at 7T is suitable to track cell migration in this type of opaque assays. The migration rates obtained in this way are comparable to clinical results suggesting that the proposed migration assays properly mimics in-vivo conditions.