Mesenchymal stem cell (MSC)-based cell therapy can provide opportunities for the treatment of various diseases. However, when used in vivo, these cells should be labelled and monitored by a non-invasive method during delivery to the desired locations within the body. This study describes a biomimicry method that effectively labels human Wharton's jelly-derived MSCs (hWJ-MSCs) with a photoacoustics (PA) contrast agent, gold nanorods (GNRs), without the need for transfection agents (TAs). In this method for cell labelling, the hWJ-MSCs were co-incubated with non-adherent cells isolated from fresh umbilical cord for 2 days immediately before incubation with GNRs. Next, hWJ-MSCs were labelled with the GNRs at a concentration of approximately 10¹⁰ nanorads/mL (NR/mL) followed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy (ICP-MS) to verify their labelling effectiveness. The GNRs-labelled MSCs prepared by this method had an intracellular gold (Au) concentration of 3.4 ± 0.4 pg/cell, which is an acceptable amount for cell labelling.

中文翻译：

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金纳米棒仿生法标记人沃顿氏果冻源间充质干细胞

基于间充质干细胞 (MSC) 的细胞疗法可以为治疗各种疾病提供机会。然而，当在体内使用时，这些细胞应在递送到体内所需位置的过程中通过非侵入性方法进行标记和监测。本研究描述了一种仿生方法，该方法可使用光声学 (PA) 造影剂、金纳米棒 (GNR) 有效标记人类沃顿商学院果冻衍生的 MSC (hWJ-MSC)，而无需转染剂 (TA)。在这种细胞标记方法中，hWJ-MSC 与从新鲜脐带分离的非贴壁细胞共同孵育 2 天，然后立即与 GNR 孵育。接下来，hWJ-MSC 用 GNR 标记，浓度约为 10 ¹⁰nanorads/mL (NR/mL)，然后通过透射电子显微镜 (TEM) 和电感耦合等离子体质谱 (ICP-MS) 验证它们的标记有效性。通过该方法制备的 GNRs 标记的 MSCs 具有 3.4 ± 0.4 pg/细胞的细胞内金 (Au) 浓度，这是细胞标记可接受的量。