Indium-111-oxine-labeled platelet scintigraphic images in the assessment of thrombogenicity in small-caliber prosthetic vascular grafts

Review: the physiological and computational approaches for atherosclerosis treatment

The cardiovascular disease has long been an issue that causes severe loss in population, especially those conditions associated with arterial malfunction, being attributable to atherosclerosis and subsequent thrombotic formation. This article reviews the physiological mechanisms that underline the transition from plaque formation in atherosclerotic process to platelet aggregation and eventually thrombosis. The physiological and computational approaches, such as percutaneous coronary intervention and stent design modeling, to detect, evaluate and mitigate this malicious progression were also discussed.

[Cell tracking. Principles and applications]

Cell based therapies such as stem cell therapies or adoptive immunotherapies are currently being explored as a potential treatment for a variety of diseases such as Parkinson's disease, diabetes or cancer. However, quantitative and qualitative evaluation of adoptively transferred cells is indispensable for monitoring the efficiency of the treatment. Current approaches mostly analyze transferred cells from peripheral blood, which cannot assess whether transferred cells actually home to and stay in the targeted tissue. Using cell-labeling methods such as direct labeling or transfection with a marker gene in conjunction with various imaging modalities (MRI, optical or nuclear imaging), labeled cells can be followed in vivo in real-time, and their accumulation as well as function in vivo can be monitored and quantified accurately. This method is usually referred to as "cell tracking" or "cell trafficking" and is also being applied in basic biological sciences, exemplified in the evaluation of genes contributing to metastasis. This review focuses on principles of this promising methodology and explains various approaches by highlighting recent examples.