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In Vivo Cell Tracking with Bioluminescence Imaging

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Abstract

Molecular imaging is a fast growing biomedical research that allows the visual representation, characterization and quantification of biological processes at the cellular and subcellular levels within intact living organisms. In vivo tracking of cells is an indispensable technology for development and optimization of cell therapy for replacement or renewal of damaged or diseased tissue using transplanted cells, often autologous cells. With outstanding advantages of bioluminescence imaging, the imaging approach is most commonly applied for in vivo monitoring of transplanted stem cells or immune cells in order to assess viability of administered cells with therapeutic efficacy in preclinical small animal models. In this review, a general overview of bioluminescence is provided and recent updates of in vivo cell tracking using the bioluminescence signal are discussed.

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Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the Medical Cluster R&D Support Project of Daegu Gyeongbuk Medical Innovation Foundation, Republic of Korea (2013), grants from the National Nuclear R&D Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (No. 2012M2A2A7014020, 2009–0078234) and grants from the Korea Healthcare Technology R&D Project, Ministry for Health, Welfare & Family Affairs, Republic of Korea. (A111345).

Conflicts of Interest

The authors Jung Eun Kim, Kalimuthu Senthilkumar, Byeong-Cheol Ahn declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Disclosure

The manuscript does not contain clinical studies or patient data.

Animal Studies

The in vivo mouse data are reprinted with permission from Kim et al. [67].

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  1. Department of Nuclear Medicine, Kyungpook National University School of Medicine and Hospital, 50, Samduk 2-ga, Jung Gu, Daegu, Republic of Korea, 700-721

    Jung Eun Kim, Senthilkumar Kalimuthu & Byeong-Cheol Ahn

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Kim, J.E., Kalimuthu, S. & Ahn, BC. In Vivo Cell Tracking with Bioluminescence Imaging. Nucl Med Mol Imaging 49, 3–10 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13139-014-0309-x

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