Molecular Imaging in stem cell-based therapies of cardiac diseases

Publication date: Available online 19 July 2017
Source:Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews
Author(s): Xiang Li, Marcus Hacker
In the past 15years, despite regenerative medicine has shown great potential for cardiovascular diseases, the outcome and safety of stem cell transplantation has shown controversial results in the published literature. Medical imaging might be useful for monitoring and quantification transplanted cells within the heart and to serially characterize the effects of stem cell therapy of the myocardium. From the multiple available noninvasive imaging techniques, magnetic resonance imaging and nuclear imaging by positron (PET) or single photon emission computer tomography (SPECT) are the most used clinical approaches to follow the fate of transplanted stem cells in vivo. In this article, we provide a review on the role of different noninvasive imaging modalities and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. We focus on the different in-vivo labeling and reporter gene imaging strategies for stem cell tracking as well as the concept and reliability to use imaging parameters as noninvasive surrogate endpoints for the evaluation of the post-therapeutic outcome.

Graphical abstract

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