NIH researchers discover method to tag transplanted cells for tracking by MRI

Episode # 92
Uploaded: March 28, 2012
Running Time: 02:29

CROWN: From the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, this is CLINICAL CENTER RADIO.

The human body is made up of trillions of cells working together to keep the organs and systems healthy and strong. But when disease invades or an injury occurs, one option is to introduce new cells to try to strengthen the body's army of cells and help the body regenerate and heal. But not all transplanted cells reach their target. Dr. Joseph Frank, chief of the Clinical Center's Radiology and Imaging Sciences Laboratory of Diagnostic Radiology Research explains:

FRANK: A large majority of the cells that you end up giving to the person don't make it to where you want them to go because they die or because they are going into a different environment. Potentially, only 3 percent of those cells will actually get to be alive at, say, three days later.

CROWN: Regenerative medicine and treatments such as cell therapy hold great promise. But Dr. Frank says cell tracking is crucial to better understand optimal dosing levels and frequency of treatments. Cell tracking is currently done with radioisotopes or reporter genes. But these methods have limitations and risks for patients. Dr. Frank and his team have developed a new method to label transplanted cells so they can be tracked by magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI. Their method involves tagging the transplanted cells with three medications that are already approved by the Food and Drug Administration -- heparin, protamine, and ferumoxytol.

FRANK: The difference here and the reason why this technology is interesting is that we've used FDA-approved product. You can actually get them from a pharmacy and mix them together. They self-assemble. They come together on their own. Then essentially can be used to magnetically tag the cells. Then with MRI you can follow where they go.

CROWN: Dr. Frank and his team hope to soon test this new cell tracking method in patients with brain tumors. From America's Clinical Research Hospital, this has been CLINICAL CENTER RADIO. In Bethesda, Maryland, I'm Ellen Crown, at the National Institutes of Health, an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services.

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