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Advances in Imaging of Cardiac Allograft Rejection

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Abstract

Endomyocardial biopsy with its inherent invasiveness and morbidity calls for the development of noninvasive imaging methods to evaluate heart transplant recipients. While conventional imaging technologies report on anatomical and metabolic changes in heart grafts, macrophage-targeted imaging could allow disease detection before gross anatomical and functional changes have occurred. One important approach in magnetic resonance–based molecular imaging exploits an increased T2/T2* relaxation effect, occurring when phagocytic cells localized in the heart graft take up iron-oxide nanoparticles. This methodology of nanoparticle reporting on immune cell accumulation in the graft combined with precise functional and morphological information of cardiac MRI has potential to supplant endomyocardial biopsy. The use of multifunctional nanoparticles fit for multiple imaging modalities (magnetic, optical, and nuclear) will help improve methods of ex vivo and in vitro imaging of allograft rejection and also further our knowledge of allograft rejection by providing a tool for nondestructive serial in vivo assessment.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, by grants from the National Institutes of Health (HL-80472 to Dr. Libby, and HL-80731 to Dr. Libby and Prof. Ralph Weissleder), by an American Society of Transplantation Faculty Development grant (to Dr. Shimizu), and by an American Heart Association Scientist Development grant (to Dr. Shimizu). We acknowledge the Center for Systems Biology and the Center for Molecular Imaging Research from Massachusetts General Hospital, directed by Prof. Ralph Weissleder, for support in obtaining data presented in the figure (Matthias Nahrendorf, MD, PhD and Peter Waterman, BS in FRI; Nicolai Sergeyev, PhD in probe preparation; and Yoshi Iwamoto, BS in histology). We thank Sara Karwacki for editing the manuscript.

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No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cardiovascular Division, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Thomas Christen, Koichi Shimizu & Peter Libby

  2. Brigham and Women’s Hospital, NRB 741, 77 Avenue Louis Pasteur, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Peter Libby

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  1. Thomas Christen
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  2. Koichi Shimizu
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  3. Peter Libby
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Correspondence to Peter Libby.

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Christen, T., Shimizu, K. & Libby, P. Advances in Imaging of Cardiac Allograft Rejection. curr cardiovasc imaging rep 3, 99–105 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12410-010-9011-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12410-010-9011-2

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