Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2V2, Canada.
Nanotechnology. 2010 Apr 16;21(15):155101. doi: 10.1088/0957-4484/21/15/155101. Epub 2010 Mar 19.
Haematopoietic stem and progenitor cell (HSPC) research has significantly contributed to the understanding and harnessing of haematopoiesis for regenerative medicine. However, the methodology for real-time tracking HSPC in vivo is still lacking, which seriously restricts the progress of research. Recently, magnetic carbon nanotubes (mCNT) have generated great excitement because they have been successfully used as vehicles to deliver a lot of biomolecules into various cells. There is, however, no report about mCNT being used for tracking HSPC. In this paper, we investigated the uptake efficiency of fluorescein-isothiocyanate-labelled mCNT (FITC-mCNT) into HSPC and their effect on the cytotoxicity and differentiation of HSPC. We found that cellular uptake of FITC-mCNT was concentration-and time-dependent. The uptake of FITC-mCNT into HSPC reached up to 100% with the highest mean fluorescence (MF). More importantly, efficient FITC-mCNT uptake has no adverse effect on the cell viability, cytotoxicity and differentiation of HSPC as confirmed by colony-forming unit assay (CFU). In conclusion, the results reported here suggest the further tailoring of mCNT for their use in HSPC labelling/tracking in vivo or gene delivery into HSPC.
造血干细胞和祖细胞 (HSPC) 的研究为理解和利用造血作用于再生医学做出了重大贡献。然而，用于实时追踪体内 HSPC 的方法仍然缺乏，这严重限制了研究的进展。最近，磁性碳纳米管 (mCNT) 的应用引起了极大的关注，因为它们已被成功用作载体将许多生物分子递送到各种细胞中。然而，目前尚无关于 mCNT 用于追踪 HSPC 的报道。在本文中，我们研究了荧光素异硫氰酸酯标记的 mCNT（FITC-mCNT）进入 HSPC 的摄取效率及其对 HSPC 细胞毒性和分化的影响。我们发现，FITC-mCNT 的细胞摄取与浓度和时间呈依赖性。FITC-mCNT 进入 HSPC 的摄取率最高可达 100%，平均荧光强度（MF）最高。更重要的是，正如集落形成单位测定（CFU）所证实的，高效的 FITC-mCNT 摄取对 HSPC 的细胞活力、细胞毒性和分化没有不良影响。总之，这里报道的结果表明可以进一步对 mCNT 进行修饰，以将其用于 HSPC 的体内标记/追踪或基因递送至 HSPC。
