For people with Type 1 diabetes who experience more than one severe hypo each year, an islet transplant can be highly beneficial and perhaps help them to regain control of their diabetes.
How do islet transplants work?
Islet cell transplantation involves extracting insulin producing islet cells from the pancreas of a deceased donor and implanting them in the liver of someone with Type 1 diabetes. The procedure can be performed with minimal risk using a needle under local anaesthetic and is usually performed twice for each patient. For people with Type 1 diabetes who experience more than one severe hypo each year, an islet transplant can be highly beneficial and perhaps help them to regain control of their diabetes.
Transplants can change lives
Type 1 diabetes results from the destruction of insulin-producing cells in the islets of the pancreas. Islet transplants have been shown to reduce the risk of severe hypos and usually also lead to improved awareness of hypoglycaemia, less variability in blood glucose levels, improved average blood glucose, improved quality of life and reduced fear of hypos.
Current projects
Diabetes UK has been instrumental in the development of a successful islet transplant programme in the UK. Soon after the first successful islet transplants were carried out by Dr James Shapiro at the University of Alberta in Canada, we began a fundraising campaign to ensure that islet transplants would be made available through the NHS.
The campaign was a great success and, in 2001, Diabetes UK donated £250,000 to launch the UK Islet Transplant Consortium, which now includes seven clinical teams from across the country. Diabetes UK supporters went on to raise £650,000 between 2001 and 2005, which paid for the UK’s first fifteen islet transplants.
Now we’re supporting research to make islet transplants event better. For example:
Professor Mark Dunne at the University of Manchester
Professor Dunne is supervising a PhD student to take ‘snapshots’ of markers on the surface of human pancreatic stem cells at each stage of their development into insulin producing cells. These will allow researchers to identify different cells in the pancreas at different stages of their development. This will help them to work out how stem cells can be isolated from donor pancreases for use in drug discovery and to improve islet transplantation.
You can read more about this project in Our research projects.
Dr Astrid Hauge-Evans at King’s College London
Dr Hauge-Evans is studying the role of communication between cells in the regulation of islet function. She aims to identify genes and molecules that are important for such communication, which will help to reveal their influence on insulin production and cell survival. This could help to improve the efficiency of islet transplants and lead to the identification of new drug targets for Type 2 diabetes.
Find out more about this research in Our research projects.
Professor Peter Jones at King’s College London
Professor Jones is using stem cells from the kidney to try and improve the effectiveness of islet transplants and work out the conditions necessary for transplants to be most effective. His findings could help to enhance transplantation techniques and ensure the most efficient use of donor islets, which are in short supply.
Read more about this work in Our research projects.
Professor James Shaw at the University of Newcastle
Professor Shaw is working to create a national database to assess the long-term risks and benefits of islet transplantation, which could enable doctors to make a more accurate assessment of who is most likely to benefit from an islet transplant. Professor Shaw is also supervising a PhD student who is studying the causes of the immune reaction that kills islet cells soon after they have been transplanted into people with Type 1 diabetes. The student will then attempt to prevent this response by filtering the islets to remove contaminating cells or by incubating the islets with stem cells. Ultimately this approach could be used to improve the long-term benefits of islet transplant for people with Type 1 diabetes.
For more details about this project, see Our research projects.
Dr Paul Squires at the University of Warwick
Dr Squires is using highly specialised equipment to study the interaction between islet cells and stem cells and the impact of glucose on the tiny forces that hold cells together in the pancreas and kidney. Ultimately his results could help to improve techniques for islet transplantation.
Learn more about this work in Our research projects.