Jason Lamanna

PhD Thesis Defense

Monday, May 11th, 2015 at 9am

Emory University Health Sciences Research Building (HSRB) Room E160

Advisors: Nicholas Boulis, MD and John Oshinski, PhD

Committee Members: Jacques Galipeau, MD; Shawn Hochman, PhD; Shella Keilholz, PhD

Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Intraspinal Stem Cell Grafts: Tracking and Targeted Transplantation

Transplantation of cellular therapeutics into the spinal cord has been explored as treatment for a range of degenerative and traumatic diseases. The post-transplantation fate of cellular therapeutics is poorly understood in both large animal models and in human studies because of limitations in cell graft detection. A minimally invasive technology for cellular graft tracking to visualize grafts in vivo is needed. However, it is important that the diagnostic marker does not impact the engraftment or efficacy of transplanted cells.  We aim to develop a straightforward, rapidly translatable method to label human neural progenitor/stem cells with magnetic ferumoxytol nanoparticles.  We investigate the potential effect of ferumoxytol labeling on biological properties of the cells and transplant them into a large animal (porcine) spinal cord.  We assess the feasibility and safety of in vivo diagnostic cell graft tracking using Magnetic Resonance Imaging and post-mortem histological identification in a clinically relevant model.  Furthermore, we leverage this tracking approach to develop and assess a minimally invasive, Magnetic Resonance Imaging-guided technique for targeted intraspinal stem cell graft transplantation in a large animal model.