Diabetes is a serious disease affecting over 1 million people in the United States. The standard treatment, injection of insulin, is not sufficient to control blood glucose in many patients and leads to complications such as kidney failure, limb amputations and blindness. Recently a new experimental therapy has shown promise of cure for this disease. The therapy consists of isolating clusters of the insulin secreting cells, called islets from cadaver pancreases and transplanting them into diabetic patients. While the results of these experimental transplants have been promising, it has been difficult to keep the islets alive once they have been isolated from the pancreas. Recently it has been shown in an animal model of diabetes, that culturing islets in a new type of bioreactor system invented at NASA, can significantly improve the survival of islets outside the body and improve the success of islet transplantation. The goal of this project is to adapt this culture system to culture human islets so that they will improve the outcome of islet transplantation to treat diabetes. Project Narrative: Pancreatic islet transplantation holds great promise for a cure for type 1 diabetes. We have experimental evidence that culturing islets in the Rotary Cell Culture System can improve the survival and function of islets after transplantation. The goal of this proposal is to verify the previous results in human patients so that this technology can be used to improve this promising therapy for diabetes.
