Abstract #1864

Wolf G, Gruener S, Koch A, Abolmaali N, Strobel K, Hietschold V

MRI allows the non-invasive tracking of single cells or small groups of cells in vivo. Therefore, cells need to be labeled with a suitable contrast agent (CA). In the present study we optimized a cell labeling strategy with MRI. By means of T1-weighted MRI and T1 relaxation time measurements, we systematically investigated the labeling of human non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells with Gd- and Mn-based CA using five different transfection agents (TAs). Our main goal was to find a combination of CA and TA, which gave the best constrast in MRI. As a result two preferable TAs for labeling NSCLC with Mn or Gd were found. The labeling strategy presented here may be easily transferred to other cells, e.g. any kind of stem cells.