Visualizing tumour self-homing with magnetic particle imaging

Due to their innate tumour homing capabilities, in recent years, CTCs have been engineered to express therapeutic genes for targeted treatment of primary and metastatic lesions. Additionally, previous studies have incorporated optical or PET imaging reporter genes to enable noninvasive monitoring of therapeutic CTCs in preclinical tumour models. Here, we demonstrate for the first time, the ability of magnetic particle imaging (MPI) to sensitively detect systemically administered iron-labeled CTCs and to visualize tumour self-homing in a murine model of human breast cancer.