Effects of labelling fetal MSC with MRI Particles: MGIO and Ferucarbotran

Cell tracking is enabled by incubating ex vivo cells with commercially/clinically available MRI particulate label, such as ferucarbotran. However, the uptake by non-phagocytic cells, such as mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) is poor, and the detection by MRI is impeded. MGIO is a new label that is efficiently taken up by MSC. The proliferation and differentiation capacity of labelled cells are usually assessed to determine cytotoxicity. In this study, we compared the global gene expression profiles of mock-labelled, ferucarbotran-labelled and MGIO-labelled fetal MSC. Fetal MSC were labelled at passage 5, washed with PBS to remove excess labels, detached by trypsin, pelleted by centrfugation and lysed for RNA extraction with the RNeasy mini kit (Qiagen) in triplicates.