A novel 19F agent for detection and quantification of human dendritic cells using magnetic resonance imaging

✍ Scribed by Fernando Bonetto; Mangala Srinivas; Arend Heerschap; Robbie Mailliard; Eric T. Ahrens; Carl G. Figdor; I. Jolanda M. de Vries

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: French
• Weight: 733 KB
• Volume: 129
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7136
• DOI: 10.1002/ijc.25672

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Monitoring of cell therapeutics in vivo is of major importance to estimate its efficacy. Here, we present a novel intracellular label for ^19^F magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)‐based cell tracking, which allows for noninvasive, longitudinal cell tracking without the use of radioisotopes. A key advantage of ^19^F MRI is that it allows for absolute quantification of cell numbers directly from the MRI data. The ^19^F label was tested in primary human monocyte‐derived dendritic cells. These cells took up label effectively, resulting in a labeling of 1.7 ± 0.1 × 10^13^
^19^F atoms per cell, with a viability of 80 ± 6%, without the need for electroporation or transfection agents. This results in a minimum detection sensitivity of about 2,000 cells/voxel at 7 T, comparable with gadolinium‐labeled cells. Comparison of the detection sensitivity of cells labeled with ^19^F, iron oxide and gadolinium over typical tissue background showed that unambiguous detection of the ^19^F‐labeled cells was simpler than with the contrast agents. The effect of the ^19^F agent on cell function was minimal in the context of cell‐based vaccines. From these data, we calculate that detection of 30,000 cells in vivo at 3 T with a reasonable signal to noise ratio for ^19^F images would require less than 30 min with a conventional fast spin echo sequence, given a coil similar to the one used in this study. This is well within acceptable limits for clinical studies, and thus, we conclude that ^19^F MRI for quantitative cell tracking in a clinical setting has great potential.