Magnetic nanoparticles: Internal probes and heaters within living cells

Tagging living cells with magnetic nanoparticles raised increasing interest in the fields of magnetic resonance imaging, magnetic hyperthermia, cell sorting or tissue engineering. Here, we demonstrate that the confinement of magnetic nanoparticles at the intracellular level, inside endosomes vesicles, allows developing original magnetic manipulations in response to different magnetic field solicitations. These manipulations are used to deform cellular internal membrane, to probe the cell architecture or to heat the cell from its inside. (C) 2008 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.