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Imaging macrophages with nanoparticles

Nature Materials volume 13, pages 125–138 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Nanomaterials have much to offer, not only in deciphering innate immune cell biology and tracking cells, but also in advancing personalized clinical care by providing diagnostic and prognostic information, quantifying treatment efficacy and designing better therapeutics. This Review presents different types of nanomaterial, their biological properties and their applications for imaging macrophages in human diseases, including cancer, atherosclerosis, myocardial infarction, aortic aneurysm, diabetes and other conditions. We anticipate that future needs will include the development of nanomaterials that are specific for immune cell subsets and can be used as imaging surrogates for nanotherapeutics. New in vivo imaging clinical tools for noninvasive macrophage quantification are thus ultimately expected to become relevant to predicting patients' clinical outcome, defining treatment options and monitoring responses to therapy.

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Figure 1: Macrophages and their progenitors in the body and their relevance to nanoparticles and imaging.
Figure 2: Examples of magnetic nanoparticles for biomedical use.
Figure 3: Organ and cell type distribution of systemically injected nanomaterials.
Figure 4: Uptake of nanoparticles into professional phagocytes and into other cells.
Figure 5: Imaging tumour-associated macrophages (TAMs) with multimodal dextran nanoparticles.
Figure 6: Use of magnetic nanoparticles for nodal cancer staging.
Figure 7: Cardiovascular nanoparticle imaging.
Figure 8: Inflammation imaging in diabetes using nanoparticles.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the National Institutes of Health for supporting this research through the National Cancer Institute Centers of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence consortia and the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute Program of Excellence in Nanotechnology consortia. We especially would like to thank our collaborators and members of Chemical Safety Board for many helpful discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Systems Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital, 185 Cambridge Street, CPZN 5206, Boston, 02114, Massachusetts, USA

    Ralph Weissleder, Matthias Nahrendorf & Mikael J. Pittet

  2. Department of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School, 200 Longwood Avenue, Boston, 02115, Massachusetts, USA

    Ralph Weissleder

  3. Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, 32 Fruit Street, Boston, 02114, Massachusetts, USA

    Ralph Weissleder, Matthias Nahrendorf & Mikael J. Pittet

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  1. Ralph Weissleder
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Correspondence to Ralph Weissleder.

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Weissleder, R., Nahrendorf, M. & Pittet, M. Imaging macrophages with nanoparticles. Nature Mater 13, 125–138 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3780

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