Vitality-Enhanced Dual-Modal Tracking System Reveals the Dynamic Fate of Mesenchymal Stem Cells for Stroke Therapy

Mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) therapy via intravenous transplantation exhibits great potential for brain tissue regeneration, but still faces thorny clinical translation challenges as the unknown dynamic fate leads to the contentious therapeutic mechanism and the poor MSC viability in harsh lesions limits therapeutic efficiency. Here, a vitality-enhanced dual-modal tracking system is designed to improve engraftment efficiency and is utilized to noninvasively explore the fate of intravenous transplanted human umbilical cord-derived MSCs during long-term treatment of ischemic stroke. Such a system is obtained by bioorthogonally conjugating magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast and near-infrared fluorescence (NIRF) imaging nanoparticles to metabolic glycoengineered MSCs with a lipoic acid-containing extracellular antioxidative protective layer. The dynamic fates of MSCs in multi-dimensional space-time evolution are digitally detailed for up to 28 days using MRI and NIRF imaging equipment, and the protective layer greatly shields MSCs from reactive oxygen spices (ROS) degradation, enhances MSC survival, and engraftment efficiency. Additionally, it is observed that the bioengineered MSCs exhibit dynamic intelligent responses corresponding to microenvironment remodeling and exert enhanced therapeutic effects. This dual-modal tracking system enables long-term tracking of MSCs while improving their viability at the lesion sites, which may serve as a valuable tool for expediting the clinical translation of MSC therapy.

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