Hopw to let 50 - 100 meshes/particles follow a path

I’m trying to think of a way to make cells in a static human body mesh follow a predetermined path.
The cells also need to have a random lifetime or fadeout point. I think i need about 50 - 100, so animating would be quite a pain.

Does anybody know of a way to do this? I Read use of particles will be difficult in this case.

Thanks!

Have you thought of particles + vector fields?