Figure 1.

Schematic summarizing a possible application of nanostructured gels in the brain. The nanostructured device, composed of (a) an injectable, biocompatible, and resorbable hydrogel, is mixed with a nontoxic amount of NPs (b) and loaded with MSCs (c) that are able to naturally phagocyte the NPs. The device is injected into its target site and the resulting labeled MSCs might be imaged by MRI or other noninvasive techniques. The insert shows an MRI scan of a mouse brain, where the dark spot indicated by the arrow is a denser signal due to SPIONPs.