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TRANSLATIONAL AND CLINICAL RESEARCH: MESENCHYMAL STEM CELLS SERIES

Finding Fluorescent Needles in the Cardiac Haystack: Tracking Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells Labeled with Quantum Dots for Quantitative In Vivo Three-Dimensional Fluorescence Analysis

^aDepartment of Biomedical Engineering, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York, USA;
^bDepartment of Physiology and Biophysics, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York, USA;
^cDepartment of Pharmacology, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA;
^dDepartment of Biomedical Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA;
^eInstitute for Molecular Cardiology, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York, USA;
^fCenter for Molecular Therapeutics, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA

Key Words. Human mesenchymal stem cells • Cell labeling • Cell tracking • Nanotechnology • Imaging

Correspondence: Amy B. Rosen, Ph.D., Institute for Molecular Cardiology, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York 11794, USA. Telephone: 631-444-7391; Fax: 631-444-3432; e-mail: amybrosen{at}gmail.com

Received November 8, 2006; accepted for publication May 4, 2007.
First published online in STEM CELLS EXPRESS   May 10, 2007.



Stem cells show promise for repair of damaged cardiac tissue. Little is known with certainty, however, about the distribution of these cells once introduced in vivo. Previous attempts at tracking delivered stem cells have been hampered by the autofluorescence of host tissue and limitations of existing labeling techniques. We have developed a novel loading approach to stably label human mesenchymal stem cells with quantum dot (QD) nanoparticles. We report the optimization and validation of this long-term tracking technique and highlight several important biological applications by delivering labeled cells to the mammalian heart. The bright QD crystals illuminate exogenous stem cells in histologic sections for at least 8 weeks following delivery and permit, for the first time, the complete three-dimensional reconstruction of the locations of all stem cells following injection into the heart.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest is found at the end of this article.

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