If we ever get stem cells to work in the brain this could be very important. And why not for delivering tPA to blockage site? I bet a smaller bolus could be used with much less chance of bleeding.
The laymans writeup here;
Using magnets to steer stem cells
The abstract here:
Magnetic Targeting of Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells with Internalized Superparamagnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles.
Abstract
Cell therapies offer exciting new
opportunities for effectively treating many human diseases. However,
delivery of therapeutic cells by intravenous injection, while
convenient, relies on the relatively inefficient process of homing of
cells to sites of injury. To address this limitation, a novel strategy
has been developed to load cells with superparamagnetic iron oxide
nanoparticles (SPIOs), and to attract them to specific sites within the
body by applying an external magnetic field. The feasibility of this
approach is demonstrated using human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs),
which may have a significant potential for regenerative cell therapies
due to their ease of isolation from autologous tissues, and their
ability to differentiate into various lineages and modulate their
paracrine activity in response to the microenvironment. The efficient
loading of hMSCs with polyethylene glycol-coated SPIOs is achieved, and
it is found that SPIOs are localized primarily in secondary lysosomes of
hMSCs and are not toxic to the cells. Further, the key stem cell
characteristics, including the immunophenotype of hMSCs and their
ability to differentiate, are not altered by SPIO loading. Through both
experimentation and mathematical modeling, it is shown that, under
applied magnetic field gradients, SPIO-containing cells can be localized
both in vitro and in vivo. The results suggest that, by loading SPIOs
into hMSCs and applying appropriate magnetic field gradients, it is
possible to target hMSCs to particular vascular networks.
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