| Clinical islet transplantation is a promising cell based therapy for type 1 diabetes. There are several factors limiting the success of this therapy. Some of these factors include a lack of test that can predict transplant outcome and islet loss during culture in a conventional culture flask. In order combat these limitations, first a microfluidic device was developed to assess the islet function as a test to predict islet transplant outcome. The results showed that microfluidic device can adequately characterize mice and human islet function. This implies that the micro-device is capable of predicting clinical islet transplant outcome.;Secondly, for the islet culture, a bioreactor culture system designed by Synthecon, Inc was used to culture an entire islet preparation. The bioreactor is a rotating cylindrical vessel that creates cell suspension with dynamic low shear and turbulence. The bioreactor would eliminate the use of several culture flasks and therefore, would potentially reduce islet loss and risk of contamination. The results showed that the in vitro and in vivo assessments of both the bioreactor and culture flask islets were comparable over a short-term culture of 24 hours. The bioreactor will however require improvements for long-term culture of islets especially stressed islets. Regardless, the bioreactor has the potential to improve clinical islet transplantation by reducing islet loss, time and cost of islet culture in the conventional method. |
