Cellular therapy is emerging as a clinically viable strategy in the field of solid organ
transplantation, where it is expected to reduce the dependency on conventional
immunosuppression. This has produced a demand for highly sensitive methods to
monitor the persistence and tissue distribution of administered cells in vivo. However,
tracking cells presents significant challenges. In many cases transplanted cells are
autologous with the immune system of the transplant recipient, and hence are invisible
to typical methods of detection. To enable their differentiation, the cells must be
labelled with a suitable, non-toxic and long lifetime label, prior to their administration to
patients. In addition, administered cells represent only a small fraction of the
recipient’s endogenous cells, which necessitates the use of an extremely sensitive
detection method. Laser ablation – inductively coupled plasma – mass spectrometry
(LA-ICP-MS) is an exquisitely sensitive analytical technique, capable of imaging trace
elements in complex samples, at high spatial resolution. [Continues.