Abstract
Purpose
To investigate the effect of ferritin protein overexpression on superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) particle labeling of C6 rat glioma cells, and track the labeled cells in vivo using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Materials and Methods
A plasmid of H-chain of murine ferritin gene was constructed and transfected into C6 cells. The parental and the transfected C6 cells labeled with SPIO were bilaterally inoculated subcutaneously into nude mice. The mice were imaged by multiple T2-weighted MR scans after C6 cell inoculation. The mice were killed 2 weeks later, and the concentration of iron in the tumor tissue was measured by inductively coupled plasma.
Results
The iron concentration in xenografts derived from SPIO-labeled C6 cells that were transfected with ferritin plasmid was significantly higher than that in xenografts from parental C6 cells that were labeled with SPIO but not transfected (p = 0.034, N = 5). Ferritin-transfected C6 cells showed an improved T2 contrast in vivo compared with parental cells labeled with SPIO but not transfected.
Conclusion
Coordinating ferritin with SPIO can lead to a longer MRI cellular tracking period.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Dr. Laura Jean Pisani at the Stanford School of Medicine for MRI technical support, and Dr. Hui Mao at the Emory University School of Medicine for helpful discussion of experimental details. This work was supported, in part, by the National Basic Research Priorities Program 973 Project (CB705707) from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, China Nanjing Medical Science and Technology Research Project (No. 06Z37), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30970813, 30930028), and the Intramural Research Program of the NIH, including the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. Dr. Jiandong Wang acknowledges financial support from Siemens Ltd. China Medical Solution for study at Stanford.
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Wang, J., Xie, J., Zhou, X. et al. Ferritin Enhances SPIO Tracking of C6 Rat Glioma Cells by MRI. Mol Imaging Biol 13, 87–93 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11307-010-0338-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11307-010-0338-5