Magnetics Business & Technology - Winter 2017 - 18

INDUSTRY NEWS
Powerful Magnetic Instument to Play Key Role
in NIH Stroke Study.
Two Florida State University researchers have received a $1.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to find new treatments for stroke. The pair, which includes MagLab researcher Sam
Grant, will conduct some of their work in the MagLab's world-record
900 MHz NMR magnet.
In the United States, stroke is the fifth leading cause of death and
one of the primary causes of disability. But the only drug approved
by the Food and Drug Administration has limited effectiveness.
Now Grant, director of the MRI user program at the FSU-headquartered MagLab and associate professor of chemical and biomedical engineering at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering (COE), and
Teng Ma, professor and chair of the COE's Department of Chemical
and Biomedical Engineering, will focus their efforts on developing
new treatments that could treat this complicated medical issue.
The team will investigate how to use cells from bone marrow and
fat tissue as a way to treat what's called an ischemic stroke. This form
of stroke occurs as a result of a blockage in a blood vessel supplying
blood to the brain and accounts for about 87 percent of all cases,
according to the American Heart Association.
To date, a clot-busting drug called tissue plasminogen activator is
the mainstay of stroke treatment, but it is only effective if administered within a short time after stroke onset and only for a small
percentage of stroke patients.
"Our long-term goal is to develop cell therapy technology for
stroke treatment," Ma said. "Specifically, we will develop technology
that allows us to produce therapeutically competent cells as well as
the ability to monitor their fate in the brain. The knowledge gained
wil help establish cell therapy as a viable technology in stroke treatment."
Researchers will look at cells called human mesenchymal stem
cells that are found in both marrow and fat tissue. Grant and Ma

believe that they can pretreat these cells and deliver them into the
brain of patients who have experienced a stroke.
These cells have attracted the attention of scientists and clinicians
because of their potential for tissue repair and regeneration after
migration to sites of tissue injuries, including damage in the brain.
"Use of these preconditioned cells should increase their therapeutic effect and viability once transplanted in the stroked brain," Ma said.
A major barrier, however, is that many of these cells die once transplanted, which greatly reduces the therapeutic benefits for stroke
treatment. Additionally, the fate and transport of these cells to the
stroke lesion are not well understood.
The joint effort of the investigators' laboratories seeks to address
these problems. Ma's laboratory has developed a unique bioreactor
system to enhance the cells' survival rate after transplantation by
preconditioning them as 3D aggregates or clumps, which have demonstrated improved viability and increased migration in cell cultures.
Grant's laboratory has developed techniques and instruments to take
advantage of the sophisticated magnet technology at the National
MagLab that can assess the efficacy of transplanted cells in a living
organism.
They will use the lab's unique 900 MHz NMR instrument - essentially a super-powered MRI featuring a 21.1 tesla magnet - to
track cells, observe the cells' impact on metabolic and ionic recovery
and assess the mechanisms that can be optimized to improve stroke
outcomes.
"This machine provides the sensitivity and specificity to monitor
the fate and transport of implanted cells over time while also letting us detect early markers for stroke recovery," Grant said. "This
will allow us to make critical decisions about how cells can be better
prepared to treat stroke."
The National High Magnetic Field Laboratory is the world's largest
and highest-powered magnet facility. Located at Florida State University, the University of Florida and Los Alamos National Laboratory,
the interdisciplinary National MagLab hosts scientists from around

Samuel Grant (left) and Teng Ma at the MagLab's 900MHz NMR magnet, which they will use for their stroke research. Samuel
Grant (left) and Teng Ma at the MagLab's 900 MHz NMR magnet, which they will use for their stroke research. Trisha Radulovich,
FAMU-FSU Engineering

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