Molecular Imaging for Integrated Medical Therapy and Drug Development

Abstract

Objectives There is increasing evidence that transplanted bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) significantly promote functional recovery after central nervous system (CNS) damage in animal models of various kinds of CNS disorders, including cerebral infarct, brain contusion. and spinal cord injury. However, there is a lack of information when considering the clinical application of BMSC transplantation for patients with neurological disorders. Therefore, we discuss here what we should clarify to establish cell transplantation therapy in the clinical situation, and we describe our recent work for this purpose. Methods and Results BMSCs have the ability to alter their gene expression profile and phenotype in response to the surrounding circumstances and to protect neurons by producing some neurotrophic factors. They also promote neurite extension and rebuild the neural circuits in the injured CNS. Using optical imaging techniques, transplanted BMSCs can be tracked noninvasively in living animals for at least 8 weeks after transplantation. Functional imaging such as positron emission tomography (PET) scans may have the potential to assess the beneficial effects of BMSC transplantation. Conclusion It is an urgent issue to develop clinical imaging techniques for tracking transplanted cells in the CNS and evaluating the therapeutic significance of BMSC transplantation in order to establish it as a definite therapeutic strategy in the clinical situation in the future.