Gizzatov, AyratHernández-Rivera, MayraKeshishian, VazrikMackeyev, YuriLaw, Justin J.Guven, AdemSethi, RichaQu, FeifeiMuthupillai, RajaCabreira-Hansen, Maria da GraçaWillerson, James T.Perin, Emerson C.Ma, QingBryant, Robert G.Wilson, Lon J.2015-10-302015-10-302015Gizzatov, Ayrat, Hernández-Rivera, Mayra, Keshishian, Vazrik, et al.. "Surfactant-free Gd3+-ion-containing carbon nanotube MRI contrast agents for stem cell labeling." <i>Nanoscale,</i> 7, (2015) Royal Society of Chemistry: 12085-12091. http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C5NR02078F.https://hdl.handle.net/1911/82003There is an ever increasing interest in developing new stem cell therapies. However, imaging and tracking stem cells in vivo after transplantation remains a serious challenge. In this work, we report new, functionalized and high-performance Gd3+-ion-containing ultra-short carbon nanotube (US-tube) MRI contrast agent (CA) materials which are highly-water-dispersible (ca. 35 mg ml−1) without the need of a surfactant. The new materials have extremely high T1-weighted relaxivities of 90 (mM s)−1 per Gd3+ ion at 1.5 T at room temperature and have been used to safely label porcine bone-marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells for MR imaging. The labeled cells display excellent image contrast in phantom imaging experiments, and TEM images of the labeled cells, in general, reveal small clusters of the CA material located within the cytoplasm with 109 Gd3+ ions per cell.engThis Open Access Article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.Journal articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C5NR02078F