Roja Rohani1, Greg Dekaban2, Christy Willert2, Sonali De Chickera2, Paula Foster1
1Imaging, Robarts Research Institute, London, Ontario, Canada; 2Biotherapeutic, Robarts Research Institute, London, Ontario, Canada
Successful Tracking of Dendritic cells (DC) is crucial for better understanding of the fate of DC based cancer vaccines. In previous preclinical and clinical studies supreparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) particles were used as DC labels and the migration of DC were followed using cellular MRI. Here we show that micron-sized superparamagnetic iron particles (MPIO) enable the detection and quantification of migrating DC. Since MPIO are inert, have high iron content and are readily taken up by DC, they are a very good label for tracking small numbers of cells or cells with less iron content.