Elemental bioimaging of thulium in mouse tissues by laser ablation-ICPMS as a complementary method to heteronuclear proton magnetic resonance imaging for cell tracking experiments.

Due to the fact that cellular therapies are increasingly finding application in clinical trials and promise success by treatment of fatal diseases, monitoring strategies to investigate the delivery of the therapeutic cells to the target organs are getting more and more into the focus of modern in vivo imaging methods. In order to monitor the distribution of the respective cells, they can be labeled with lanthanide complexes such as thulium-1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclodoecane-α,α,α,α-tetramethyl-1,4,7,10-tetraacetic acid (Tm(DOTMA)). In this study, experiments on a mouse model with two different cell types, namely, tumor cells and macrophages labeled with Tm(DOTMA), were performed.

Diagnosis of nephrogenic systemic fibrosis by means of elemental bioimaging and speciation analysis.

The combined use of elemental bioimaging and speciation analysis is presented as a novel means for the diagnosis of nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF), a rare disease occurring after administration of gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCA) for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), in skin samples of patients suffering from renal insufficiency. As the pathogenesis of NSF is still largely unknown particularly with regard to the distribution and potential retention of gadolinium in the human organism, a skin biopsy sample from a suspected NSF patient was investigated. The combination of inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), laser ablation (LA) ICP-MS for quantitative elemental bioimaging, and hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) ICP-MS for speciation analysis allowed one to unambiguously diagnose the patient as a case of NSF.