(March, 2008) -- For the first time ever, scientists can view how transplanted insulin-secreting cells called islets function when they are inside a living organism. Researchers from the Diabetes Research Institute (DRI) at the University of Miami Miller School Of Medicine and Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden published their findings on line March 7 in Nature Medicine. Although still in the experimental stages of clinical research, islet cell transplantation is currently considered the most promising method for curing type 1 diabetes.
“Up until now we have had no clear way to directly view and monitor how transplanted insulin producing cells function after they are infused into a patient,” explains Camillo Ricordi, M.D., scientific director of the Diabetes Research Institute. “This new technique allows us to study transplanted tissues with sophisticated multiphoton confocal microscopy technology, as if we were observing the transplants through a window in real time. It lets us follow, biological processes, like the effect of a novel intervention, for example. One of the biggest problems with islet cell transplantation has been having enough of the insulin producing cells survive the transplant process itself; now we have a window into that living world and this will expedite research considerably.” |