Abstract #0680

Herzka D, Liu W, Dahnke H, Lewis B, Jordan E, Banu N, Schaeffter T, Frank J

Quantifying the number of labeled stem cells in target tissues in experimental models is of great importance to optimize dose and timing of cellular therapy in clinical trials. In this study, we investigated the quantitative relationship between iron labeled cells and tissue R2* relaxation rate in a tumor rat model. The in vivo experiments demonstrated an excellent linear correlation between the number of iron labeled cells and tissue R2*. Our data further illustrates that R2* measurement is a reliable and sensitive approach for the in vivo quantification of iron labeled cells.