Stem Cell Tracking with Nanoparticles for Regenerative Medicine Purposes: An Overview

Abstract

Accurate and noninvasive stem cell tracking is one of the most important needs in regenerative medicine to determine both stem cell destinations and final differentiation fates, thus allowing a more detailed picture of the mechanisms involved in these therapies. Given the great importance and advances in the field of nanotechnology for stem cell imaging, currently, several nanoparticles have become standardized products and have been undergoing fast commercialization. This review has been intended to summarize the current use of different engineered nanoparticles in stem cell tracking for regenerative medicine purposes, in particular by detailing their main features and exploring their biosafety aspects, the first step for clinical application. Moreover, this review has summarized the advantages and applications of stem cell tracking with nanoparticles in experimental and preclinical studies and investigated present limitations for their employment in the clinical setting.

Advances and Challenges on Cancer Cells Reprogramming Using Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Technologies

“…Such protocols could be therapeutically effective to treat or even cure many human diseases, such as diabetes, Parkinson and others, including different injuries that are today considered incurable 45. The growing quest for an ideal cell with a high differentiation potential in the target tissue has raised a vast number of questions and several problems that must be faced by scientists, such as immunohistocompatibility between donor and recipient, as well as, bioethics issues.…”

Nanoparticle Technologies in the Spinal Cord

“…Nanoparticles can be fab-ricated from a wide variety of materials, including polymers, liposomes, inorganics, and metals [Gurny, 1981;Park et al, 2009;Papastefanaki et al, 2015;Saxena et al, 2015]. Due to the vast differences among these materials, there is a broad range of functions and applications for nanoparticles; they are utilized for imaging, cell identification, cell targeting, and drug delivery [Sun et al, 2008;Ruoslahti et al, 2010;Chan et al, 2013;Joo et al, 2015;Accomasso et al, 2016]. Advances in chemistry, biology, engineering, materials science, pharmaceutics, and physics have allowed for the development of innovative nanoparticles with different shapes, sizes, surface chemistries, and cargoes.…”

Effective Labeling of Primary Somatic Stem Cells with BaTiO3 Nanocrystals for Second Harmonic Generation Imaging

“…The development of labeling strategies to track transplanted stem cells promises to advance our understanding of how these cells mediate functional recovery in vivo. Reporter genes that encode for selectable markers such as fluorescent and luminescent proteins have been widely used to track transplanted stem cells over long periods of time; however, these markers have multiple limitations for intravital imaging, such as limited depth penetration in tissue, pronounced photobleaching over time, and the presence of autofluorescence in surrounding tissues . In addition, introducing exogenous genes may influence the function and behavior of stem cells …”

“…To circumvent these limitations, a variety of inorganic nanoparticles have been proposed as alternative imaging agents for cell tracking . Despite the wide variety of imaging modalities utilized, tracking of stem cells in vivo at a high signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) typically requires excess nanoparticle loading.…”