骨髄環境の生体ライブイメージング

Osteoimmunology～Beyond the Boundaries～. Analysis of bone tissues by intravital imaging.

　我々は生体二光子励起イメージング系を用いることにより，生きたマウスの骨髄を構成する細胞をリアルタイムに観察する方法を確立した。 　本稿では，骨髄機能の本質を理解する上で理想的な方法と言える，骨髄を可視化し長時間観察できる生体二光子励起イメージング系を用いてこれまでに報告された造血幹細胞・白血病の生体イメージングや，その応用と将来性について概説する。

　In recent years,“the fluorescent imaging techniques”has made rapid advances, it has become possible to observe the dynamics of living cells in individuals or tissues. It has been considered that it is extremely difficult to observe the living bone marrow directly because bone marrow is surrounded by a hard calcareous. But now, we established a method for observing the cells constituting the bone marrow of living mice in real time by the use of the intravital two-photon imaging system. 　In this article, we show the latest data and the reports about the hematopoietic stem cells and the leukemia cells by using the intravital imaging techniques, and also discuss its further application.