Efficacy and safety of bone marrow-derived cell transplantation for spinal cord injury: a systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials.

Purpose: Bone marrow-derived cells (BMDCs) for clinical transplantation were carried out many years in treating spinal cord injury (SCI) without a clear conclusion. This study aimed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of BMDC transplantation in treatment of SCI patients.

Method: Electronic databases, including PubMed, EMBASE, MEDLINE, and the Cochrane library, were searched to identify clinical therapeutic trials studying the application of BMDC transplantation in SCI.

In Vivo Monitoring of Multiple Circulating Cell Populations Using Two-photon Flow Cytometry.

To detect and quantify multiple distinct populations of cells circulating simultaneously in the blood of living animals, we developed a novel optical system for two-channel, two-photon flow cytometry in vivo. We used this system to investigate the circulation dynamics in live animals of breast cancer cells with low (MCF-7) and high (MDA-MB-435) metastatic potential, showing for the first time that two different populations of circulating cells can be quantified simultaneously in the vasculature of a single live mouse. We also non-invasively monitored a population of labeled, circulating red blood cells for more than two weeks, demonstrating that this technique can also quantify the dynamics of abundant cells in the vascular system for prolonged periods of time.

Quantitative two-photon flow cytometry--in vitro and in vivo.

Flow cytometry is a powerful technique for quantitative characterization of fluorescence in cells. Quantitation is achieved by ensuring a high degree of uniformity in the optical excitation and detection, generally by using a highly controlled flow. Two-photon excitation has the advantages that it enables simultaneous excitation of multiple dyes and achieves a very high SNR through simplified filtering and fluorescence background reduction.

Parallel confocal detection of single molecules in real time.

The confocal detection principle is extended to a highly parallel optical system that continuously analyzes thousands of concurrent sample locations. This is achieved through the use of a holographic laser illumination multiplexer combined with a confocal pinhole array before a prism dispersive element used to provide spectroscopic information from each confocal volume. The system is demonstrated to detect and identify single fluorescent molecules from each of several thousand independent confocal volumes in real time.