Red blood cells as carriers in magnetic particle imaging

Antonella Antonelli, Carla Sfara, Jürgen Rahmer, Bernhard Gleich, Jörn Borgert, Mauro Magnani

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

33 Scopus citations

Abstract

Red blood cells (RBCs) represent intravascular carriers for drugs, biologics, and other therapeutic agents, characterized by their unique longevity in the bloodstream, availability, considerable surface and volume, high biocompatibility, and natural mechanisms for safe elimination. Recently, the potential of RBCs loaded with superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) nanoparticles as a tracer material for magnetic particle imaging (MPI) to realize a blood-pool tracer agent with longer blood retention time for imaging of the circulatory system, has been investigated. MPI is a new tomographic imaging approach that can quantitatively map magnetic nanoparticle distributions in vivo. However, SPIO contrast agents, such as Resovist, have a short blood half-life due to rapid uptake by the reticuloendothelial system, which limits the applicability of such compounds for certain applications such as long-term monitoring. Here, we report the in vitro magnetic characterization study of human SPIO-loaded RBCs and the first MPI results obtained after intravenous injection of murine SPIO-loaded RBCs in an in vivo MPI experiment.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)517-525
Number of pages9
JournalBiomedizinische Technik
Volume58
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Dec 2013
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Carriers
  • MPI
  • SPIO nanoparticles
  • red blood cells

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