Pancreatic islet transplantation for treating diabetes

Abstract

Pancreatic islet transplantation is one of the options for treating diabetes and has been shown to improve the quality of life of severe diabetic patients. Since the Edmonton protocol was announced, islet transplantation have advanced considerably, including islet after kidney transplantation, utilisation of non-heart-beating donors, single-donor islet transplantation and living-donor islet transplantation. These advances were based on revised immunosuppression protocols, improved pancreas procurement and islet isolation methods, and enhanced islet engraftment. Further improvements are necessary to make islet transplantation a routine clinical treatment. To synergise efforts towards a cure for type 1 diabetes, a Diabetes Research Institute (DRI) Federation is currently being established to include leading diabetes research centres worldwide, including DRIs in Miami, Edmonton and Kyoto among others.

Keywords::

• Diabetes Research Institute Federation
• islet transplantation
• Kyoto Islet Isolation Method
• living donor islet
• non-heart-beating donor
• transplantation
• type 1 diabetes

Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, and the 21st Century Center of Excellence Program, Japan. The authors thank Y Nakai, M Ueda, A Ishii and E Yabunaka for their technical support, and Y Tamura and L Upshaw for their careful review of this manuscript.