Open AccessEngineering Strategies to Improve Islet Transplantation for Type 1 Diabetes Therapy
Author(s) -
Alisa White,
James G. Shamul,
Jiangsheng Xu,
Stanford J. Stewart,
Jonathan S. Bromberg,
Xiaoming He
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
acs biomaterials science and engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.082
H-Index - 50
ISSN - 2373-9878
DOI - 10.1021/acsbiomaterials.9b01406
Subject(s) - islet , transplantation , type 1 diabetes , immune system , diabetes mellitus , medicine , type 2 diabetes , pancreatic islets , beta cell , immunology , islet cell transplantation , endocrinology
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks insulin-producing beta cells of pancreatic islets. Type 1 diabetes can be treated with islet transplantation; however, patients must be administered immunosuppressants to prevent immune rejection of the transplanted islets if they are not autologous or not engineered with immune protection/isolation. To overcome biological barriers of islet transplantation, encapsulation strategies have been developed and robustly investigated. While islet encapsulation can prevent the need for immunosuppressants, these approaches have not shown much success in clinical trials due to a lack of long-term insulin production. Multiple engineering strategies have been used to improve encapsulation and post-transplantation islet survival. In addition, more efficient islet cryopreservation methods have been designed to facilitate the scaling-up of islet transplantation. Other islet sources have been identified including porcine islets and stem cell-derived islet-like aggregates. Overall, islet-laden capsule transplantation has greatly improved over the past 30 years and is moving towards becoming a clinically feasible treatment for type 1 diabetes.