The JDRF has also funded other programs to study Islet Transplantation
including: Harvard Medical School
and the University
of Chicago/University of Minnesota.With generous funding from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International and the WW Smith Charitable Fund, a team from the University of Pennsylvania is endeavoring to solve the problems of pancreatic islet transplantation in order that the procedure might be used to achieve euglycemia in diabetic patients.
The transplant program at the University of Pennsylvania has long-standing interest in the application of pancreatic islet transplantation for the treatment of human diabetes. In fact, beta cell replacement therapy was first conceived independently by researchers at Penn and St Louis by demonstrating in 1972 that islet transplantation in rodents reversed diabetes. Type I diabetes develops when the immune system attacks and destroys insulin producing beta cells. As a result the body loses its ability to produce insulin and, therefore, to regulate blood sugar levels. The goal of islet transplantation is to restore normal insulin production by transplanting the tissue responsible for making insulin (pancreatic islets) into the diabetic patient.
To date, we have proven the feasibility of clinical islet transplantation in three successful isografts. At the same time we have continued basic experimental investigation of the biological barriers to islet transplantation with emphasis on the induction of immunological tolerance. With recent advances in clinical transplantation and insights gained from experimental islet transplantation, we believe that there now exists a sufficient basic science foundation to justify further clinical trials of islet transplantation in man. To this end, we have embarked on the development of a comprehensive islet transplantation program at the University of Pennsylvania, with its focus the Isolation, Evaluation, Transplantation and Imaging of high quality human islets.
This effort has as its major thrust the development of an islet core facility and the institution of initial trials in humans. The islet core facility consists of a laboratory specifically designed to allow for the sterile isolation of large numbers of the b cells. This government-standard facility provides an arena to test biochemical and morphological parameters and to assure a large number of functionally active and viable cells. This is very important as insufficient numbers of viable cells is a probable cause for the failure of previous transplant trails by other investigators. Once we are proficient at harvesting these cells, human trials will begin. In future human trials we will investigate novel approaches for improving transplantation success such as intrathymic tolerance and new immunosupression agents.
Clinical trials will be complemented by experimentation in the isolation and imaging of islets. The ability to view b cells in vivo is the final aspect of our project. We will investigate the clinical utility of what we believe is the first successful technique for imaging the islets grafts in vivo following transplantation using b cell specific receptor targeting with radio-labeled ligands and PET scan imaging.
The JDRF has also funded other programs to study Islet Transplantation
including: Harvard Medical School
and the University
of Chicago/University of Minnesota.
Find out more about research at the University of
Pennsylvania Health System