Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: Islet transplantation (ITx) is a therapeutic option for patients with Type 1 diabetes. However there is attrition of graft function and the majority of patients require exogenous insulin injections and/or further transplants, within five years. Mouse models help elucidate mechanisms of islet graft failure and the NOD/Lt-scid IL2rγnull (NSG) mouse is useful to study human islet engraftment but few published studies exist. As diffe...

The shortage of donor material has driven research towards finding a replenishable supply of islets for transplantation. We have previously shown that the exocrine material that results as a by-product of the islet isolation procedure can be transdifferentiated towards functional islet-like structures by overexpression of the pancreatic transcription factors (TFs) Pdx1, MafA, Ngn3 and Pax4 followed by culture in the presence of betacellulin, nicotinamide and exendin-4. These c...