ABSTRACT
Labelling living cells with magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) creates opportunities for numerous imaging and therapeutic applications such as cell manipulation, cell patterning for tissue engineering, magnetically assisted cell delivery or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-assisted cell tracking. The unique advantage of magnetic-based methods is to activate or monitor cell behaviour by a remote stimulus, the magnetic šeld. Cell labelling methods using superparamagnetic nanoparticles (NPs) have been widely developed, showing no adverse effect on cell proliferation and functionalities while conferring magnetic properties to various cell types. This chapter describes a controlled method for MNP cellular labelling and gives an overview of the most important applications of ‘magnetic cells’, focusing particularly on the medical promises.
