Tracking of Administered Progenitor Cells in Brain Injury and Stroke by Magnetic Resonance Imaging

If your stem cell provider isn't tracking the cells they inject then they have no f*cking idea if they survived and are doing any good at all. This is why I don't trust any statements about Gordie Howe. They have absolutely no idea if the stem cells even lived. Any clinical research that doesn't include tracking should never even get funded.
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-15063-5_12

• Bhagelu R. Achyut PhD,
• Prof. Ali S. Arbab MD, PhD

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Abstract

Traumatic brain injury and stroke remain important causes of chronic neurologic morbidity due to the lack of vasculature in injured brain. Promising data from preclinical and clinical studies suggest that transplantation of exogenous hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and neural progenitor cells (NPCs) has therapeutic potential for boosting brain repair. This neuroregeneration could be achieved by HSCs/NPCs migration, differentiation, enhanced endogenous angiogenesis and neurogenesis, and the secretion of trophic factors by these cells in injured tissue and stroke. The neuroregeneration is achieved by significant decrease in graft-versus-host disease and improved functional behavior of damaged brain. Importantly, these stem cells are derived from peripheral blood, umbilical cord blood (UCB), bone marrow (BM), and embryonic sources. A subpopulation of CD34⁺ human HSCs identified by the cell-surface molecule AC133 (CD133) has been shown to be more specific for endothelial differentiation and vascular repair. Similarly, NPCs have shown to induced angiogenesis and neurogenesis in stroke. Several studies have been exploited in vivo imaging modalities, importantly magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to monitor the migration and engraftment efficacy of administered cells for cell-based therapies. This chapter covers the characterization of contrast agents, cell-labeling methods for MRI, use of endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) and NPCs in vascular integrity and neuroregeneration, and molecular mechanisms of their homing to the injured or stroke site, such as their interaction with brain endothelium as depicted by MRI.