Revealing the Fate of Transplanted Stem Cells In Vivo with a Novel Optical Imaging Strategy

Abstract

Stem-cell-based regenerative medicine holds great promise in clinical practices. However, the fate of stem cells after transplantation, including the distribution, viability, and the cell clearance, is not fully understood, which is critical to understand the process and the underlying mechanism of regeneration for better therapeutic effects. Herein, we develop a dual-labeling strategy to in situ visualize the fate of transplanted stem cells in vivo by combining the exogenous near-infrared fluorescence imaging in the second window (NIR-II) and endogenous red bioluminescence imaging (BLI). The NIR-II fluorescence of Ag₂ S quantum dots is employed to dynamically monitor the trafficking and distribution of all transplanted stem cells in vivo due to its deep tissue penetration and high spatiotemporal resolution, while BLI of red-emitting firefly luciferase (RfLuc) identifies the living stem cells after transplantation in vivo because only the living stem cells express RfLuc. This facile strategy allows for in situ visualization of the dynamic trafficking of stem cells in vivo and the quantitative evaluation of cell translocation and viability with high temporal and spatial resolution, and thus reports the fate of transplanted stem cells and how the living stem cells help, regeneration, for an instance, of a mouse with acute liver failure.

Keywords: NIR-II fluorescence imaging; bioluminescence imaging; cell fate; regenerative medicine; stem cells.