Myriam Marianne Chaumeil1, Christopher G.
Boyd2, Beatrice Gini3, Raquel Santos2,
Jacqueline de La Torre2, Christina Ng2, Huijan Yang3,
Akio Iwanami3, Subramanian Sukumar1, Tomoko Ozawa2,
Russel O. Pieper2, Paul Mischel3, C. David James2,
Sabrina M. Ronen1
1Radiology, University of
California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States; 2Neurological
Surgery, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United
States; 3Pathology & Lab. Medicine, University of California
Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States
In an effort to design an efficient stem cell (SCs)-based therapy product for the treatment of glioblastoma (GBM) tumors, we compared the pathotropism of two different SCs sources towards GBM tumors, human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) and fetal neural stem cells (fNSCs). Using MR imaging and dynamic contrast enhanced MRI at 14.1Tesla, MPIO-labeled hMSCs and fNSCs biodistributions were characterized over a 7-day period. The tropism of both fNSCs and hMSCs was found to be comparable: both SCs types first localized at the tumor edges, in highly neovascularized regions, then in the tumor mass and also further away tracking tumor microsatellites.