Giant Vesicles Containing Superparamagnetic Iron Oxide as Biodegradable Cell-Tracking MRI Probes

Abstract

A major breakthrough in <i>in vivo</i> cellular imaging has been the clinical/preclinical use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with contrast agent. Superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) is a promising candidate for the development of smart MRI probes for cell-tracking. In the present study, we describe biodegradable probes made of giant vesicles (GVs; closed lipid membranes with diameters >1 μm) that encapsulate SPIO for use as an MRI contrast agent. These SPIO-containing GVs (SPIO-GVs) exhibited excellent contrast enhancement in the single cell of medaka fish (<i>Oryzias latipes</i>) embryos immediately after their microinjection, and this enhancement disappeared when the GV membranes were destroyed. Our results demonstrate that SPIO-GVs are useful MRI probes for single cell-tracking that have minimum cytotoxicity and will greatly improve clinical/preclinical <i>in vivo</i> cellular imaging techniques