The pancreatic islets or islets of Langerhans are the regions of the pancreas that contain its endocrine (hormone-producing) cells, discovered in 1869 by German pathological anatomist Paul Langerhans. The pancreatic islets constitute 1–2% of the pancreas volume and receive 10–15% of its blood flow. The pancreatic islets are arranged in density routes throughout the human pancreas, and are important in the metabolism of glucose.
In medicine, a pancreatectomy is the surgical removal of all or part of the pancreas. Several types of pancreatectomy exist, including pancreaticoduodenectomy, distal pancreatectomy, segmental pancreatectomy, and total pancreatectomy. In total pancreatectomy, the gallbladder, distal stomach, a portion of the small intestine, associated lymph nodes and in certain cases the spleen are removed in addition to the entire pancreas. In recent years, the TP-IAT has also gained respectable traction within the medical community. These procedures are used in the management of several conditions involving the pancreas, such as benign pancreatic tumors, pancreatic cancer, and pancreatitis.
Regenerative medicine deals with the "process of replacing, engineering or regenerating human or animal cells, tissues or organs to restore or establish normal function". This field holds the promise of engineering damaged tissues and organs by stimulating the body's own repair mechanisms to functionally heal previously irreparable tissues or organs.
Type 1 diabetes (T1D), formerly known as juvenile diabetes, is an autoimmune disease that originates when cells that make insulin are destroyed by the immune system. Insulin is a hormone required for the cells to use blood sugar for energy and it helps regulate glucose levels in the bloodstream. It results in high blood sugar levels in the body prior to treatment. The common symptoms of this elevated blood sugar are frequent urination, increased thirst, increased hunger, weight loss, and other serious complications. Additional symptoms may include blurry vision, tiredness, and slow wound healing. Symptoms typically develop over a short period of time, often a matter of weeks if not months.
The Miller School of Medicine, officially Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, is the University of Miami's graduate medical school in Miami, Florida. Founded in 1952, it is the oldest medical school in the state of Florida.
Dr. A. M. James Shapiro is a British-Canadian surgeon best known for leading the clinical team that developed the Edmonton Protocol – an islet transplant procedure for the treatment of type 1 diabetes. Dr. Shapiro is Professor of Surgery, Medicine, and Surgical Oncology at the University of Alberta and the Director of the Clinical Islet Transplant Program and the Living Donor Liver Transplant Program with Alberta Health Services.
The Edmonton protocol is a method of implantation of pancreatic islets for the treatment of type 1 diabetes mellitus, specifically "brittle" type 1 diabetics prone to hypoglycemic unawareness. The protocol is named for the islet transplantation group at the University of Alberta in the Canadian city of Edmonton, where the protocol was first devised in the late 1990s, and published in The New England Journal of Medicine in July 2000.
Islet transplantation is the transplantation of isolated islets from a donor pancreas into another person. It is a treatment for type 1 diabetes. Once transplanted, the islets begin to produce insulin, actively regulating the level of glucose in the blood.
Paul Eston Lacy was an anatomist and experimentalist and one of the world’s leading diabetes mellitus researchers. He is often credited as the originator of islet transplantation.
Anthony Atala is an American bioengineer, urologist, and pediatric surgeon. He is the W.H. Boyce professor of urology, the founding director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and the chair of the Department of Urology at Wake Forest School of Medicine in North Carolina. His work focuses on the science of regenerative medicine: "a practice that aims to refurbish diseased or damaged tissue using the body's own healthy cells".
The University of Alberta Hospital (UAH) is a research and teaching hospital in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The hospital is affiliated with the University of Alberta and run by Alberta Health Services, the health authority for Alberta. It is one of Canada's leading health sciences centres, providing a comprehensive range of diagnostic and treatment services to inpatients and outpatients. The UAH treats over 700,000 patients annually.
Insulitis is an inflammation of the islets of Langerhans, a collection of endocrine tissue located in the pancreas that helps regulate glucose levels, and is classified by specific targeting of immune cell infiltration in the islets of Langerhans. This immune cell infiltration can result in the destruction of insulin-producing beta cells of the islets, which plays a major role in the pathogenesis, the disease development, of type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Insulitis is present in 19% of individuals with type 1 diabetes and 28% of individuals with type 2 diabetes. It is known that genetic and environmental factors contribute to insulitis initiation, however, the exact process that causes it is unknown. Insulitis is often studied using the non-obese diabetic (NOD) mouse model of type 1 diabetes. The chemokine family of proteins may play a key role in promoting leukocytic infiltration into the pancreas prior to pancreatic beta-cell destruction.
ISMETT, in Italian, Istituto Mediterraneo per i Trapianti e Terapie ad Alta Specializzazione translated as the Mediterranean Institute for Transplantation and Advanced Specialized Therapies, is a center for organ transplantation located in Palermo, Italy. ISMETT was founded in 1997 as a partnership between the Region of Sicily, the Civico and Cervello hospitals in Palermo, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC).
Bernhard J. Hering is professor of surgery and medicine and executive director of the Schulze Diabetes Institute at the University of Minnesota, where he serves as Vice Chair of Translational Medicine in the Medical School's Department of Surgery and where he holds the McKnight Presidential Chair in Transplantation Science and the Jeffrey Dobbs and David Sutherland, MD, PhD Chair in Diabetes Research.
Stefan R. Bornstein is the director of the Centre for Internal Medicine and the Medical Clinic and Policlinic III at the University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus of the Technical University of Dresden as well as the medical faculty's vice dean of international affairs and development and a member of the supervisory board of the University Hospital of Dresden. Furthermore, he is chair and honorary consultant for diabetes and endocrinology at King's College London. Previously, Bornstein worked as assistant director and professor of endocrinology at the University Hospital of Düsseldorf, as unit chief at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland and held the Heisenberg-scholarship of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
Rainer W.G. Gruessner is a German-born American general surgeon and transplant surgeon, most noted as a surgical pioneer for his clinical and research innovations. Gruessner was the first transplant surgeon to perform all types of abdominal transplants from living donors.
Jeffrey A. Bluestone is an American researcher who is the A.W. and Mary Margaret Clausen Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Metabolism and Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, and was previously executive vice chancellor and provost of that university. He began the UCSF affiliation in 2000, after earlier positions at the NCI-NIH, and at The University of Chicago.
Cell isolation is the process of separating individual living cells from a solid block of tissue or cell suspension. While some types of cell naturally exist in a separated form, other cell types that are found in solid tissue require specific techniques to separate them into individual cells. This may be performed by using enzymes to digest the proteins that binds these cells together within the extracellular matrix. After the matrix proteins have been digested, cells remain loosely bound together but can be gently separated mechanically. Following isolation, experiments can be performed on these single isolated cells including patch clamp electrophysiology, calcium fluorescence imaging, and immunocytochemistry.
Keith Reemtsma was an American transplant surgeon, best known for the cross-species kidney transplantation operation from chimpanzee to human in 1964. With only the early immunosuppressants and no long-term dialysis, the female recipient survived nine months, long enough to return to work.
Rahul M. Jindal is an American transplant surgeon, professor, humanitarian and author. In 2008, he set up a renal replacement therapy program which led to the only comprehensive kidney transplant and dialysis program in Guyana. As of 2019, he is a professor in the Department of Surgery at Uniformed Services University, Bethesda, Maryland. Since 2008, he has been an attending transplant surgeon at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center where he performs kidney transplants and mentors senior-level students and residents in surgical sciences and global health. Since 2005, he has been a Commissioner at the Montgomery County Office of Human Rights, Maryland. He also serves as Commissioner for the Governor's Office on Service and Volunteerism in Maryland. Jindal is also an adjunct Professor of Global Health at the Indian Institute of Public Health, Gandhinagar.
