Magnetic cells with surface modified Fe3O4 spherical and rod-shaped nanoparticles for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications

Although magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) have fueled the field of nanotechnology in the last few years, the application of MNPs in cell-based therapies has seldom been considered. We hypothesized that magnetically labeled cells could be delivered by intravenous injection, and guided to sites of injury within the body, upon magnetic actuation. Moreover, cells could be retained in the damaged site, creating three dimensional tissue constructs that mimic the structure and functional properties of the native tissue. In this work cells were loaded with superparamagnetic Fe₃O₄ sphere or rod-shaped nanoparticles. The influence of MNPs shape, size, concentration, and time of incubation on cellular internalization was analyzed. Additionally, cell-sheets were successfully generated by magnetic force-based tissue engineering (TE).