Intracellular Delivery of Luciferase with Fluorescent Nanodiamonds for Dual-Modality Imaging of Human Stem Cells.

Delivering functional proteins (such as enzymes) into cells is important in various biological studies and is often accomplished indirectly by transfection with DNA or mRNA encoding recombinant proteins. However, the transfection efficiency of conventional plasmid methods is low for primary cells, which are crucial sources of cell therapy. Here, we present a new platform based on the use of fluorescent nanodiamond (FND) as a biocompatible nanocarrier to enable rapid, effective, and homogeneous labeling of human mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) with luciferase for multiplex assays and ultrasensitive detection. More than 100 pg of FND and 100 million copies of firefly luciferase can be delivered into each MSC through endocytosis. Moreover, these endocytic luciferase molecules are catalytically active for hours, allowing the cells to be imaged and tracked in vitro as well as in vivo by both fluorescence and bioluminescence imaging. Our results demonstrate that luciferase-conjugated FNDs are useful as multifunctional labels of human stem cells for diverse theranostic applications.