Institute of Integrative Biology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom.
Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom.
Elife. 2018 Jun 27;7:e33140. doi: 10.7554/eLife.33140.
Understanding the fate of exogenous cells after implantation is important for clinical applications. Preclinical studies allow imaging of cell location and survival. Labelling with nanoparticles enables high sensitivity detection, but cell division and cell death cause signal dilution and false positives. By contrast, genetic reporter signals are amplified by cell division. Here, we characterise lentivirus-based bi-cistronic reporter gene vectors and silica-coated gold nanorods (GNRs) as synergistic tools for cell labelling and tracking. Co-expression of the bioluminescence reporter luciferase and the optoacoustic reporter near-infrared fluorescent protein iRFP720 enabled cell tracking over time in mice. Multispectral optoacoustic tomography (MSOT) showed immediate biodistribution of GNR-labelled cells after intracardiac injection and successive clearance of GNRs (day 1-15) with high resolution, while optoacoustic iRFP720 detection indicated tumour growth (day 10-40). This multimodal cell tracking approach could be applied widely for cancer and regenerative medicine research to monitor short- and long-term biodistribution, tumour formation and metastasis.
了解植入后外源性细胞的命运对于临床应用非常重要。临床前研究允许对细胞位置和存活进行成像。纳米粒子标记可实现高灵敏度检测，但细胞分裂和细胞死亡会导致信号稀释和假阳性。相比之下，遗传报告基因信号会通过细胞分裂放大。在这里，我们将基于慢病毒的双顺反子报告基因载体和硅涂层金纳米棒（GNR）描述为用于细胞标记和跟踪的协同工具。生物发光报告酶荧光素和光声报告近红外荧光蛋白 iRFP720 的共表达使我们能够在小鼠中随时间跟踪细胞。多谱光声断层扫描（MSOT）显示，心脏内注射 GNR 标记的细胞后可立即进行生物分布，并且在高分辨率下连续清除 GNR（第 1-15 天），而光声 iRFP720 检测则表明肿瘤生长（第 10-40 天）。这种多模态细胞跟踪方法可广泛应用于癌症和再生医学研究，以监测短期和长期的生物分布、肿瘤形成和转移。
