Pig Islets May Ease Shortage for Islet Transplants
Background:
For years, pig insulin, which differs from human insulin by only one amino acid, was used as a standard treatment for patients with type1 diabetes. Today, scientists here at the DRI are broadening that pig-to-human view and studying whether islet cells from a pig can be transplanted into humans.
The transplantation of organs or tissues from one species to another is called Xenotransplantation (ZEE-no-transplantation). If scientists determine this type of pig xenotransplantation is viable, it would help to ease the shortage of insulin-producing cells for the treatment of diabetes.
Research Focus:
For islet xenotransplantation to become a clinical option, effective and safe immune therapies need to be developed in relevant pre-clinical models. At the DRI, pre-clinical studies are currently ongoing to evaluate novel approaches to protect porcine islets from rejection using encapsulation techniques and to develop protocols of immune interventions that attain long-term function of transplanted cells.
Our Pre-Clinical Cell Processing and Translational Models team is working on the standardization of islets isolation techniques from pigs by modifying the way they isolate human islets from human pancreases. Those pig islets are now being studied and characterized with the array of tests developed to study the potency and function of human islets to improve our understanding on the physiologic differences that could be relevant for their outcome in humans.
In addition to the potential for xenotransplantation, the availability of pig islets allows our diabetes research teams to test other experimental questions that would be too expensive to perform directly on human islets (i.e., organ preservation, cell processing, islet culture and transplant techniques, amongst others).
Leading to a Cure: How this Research Supports our Mission
Currently, there’s a shortage of human islets available for transplantation. Alternative sources of insulin-producing tissue are needed and pig islets, through xenotransplantation, might represent a viable alternative, or complementary source, of islet cells.