HUMAN ISLET DISTRIBUTION ACTIVITY 

FOR BASIC RESEARCH: ANNUAL REPORT 2008

Tatsuya Kin, Doug O’Gorman, Wendy Zhai, Brad Richer, Shawn Rosichuk,

Adam Schroeder, Andrew Malcolm, AM James Shapiro

Clinical Islet Laboratory and Clinical Islet Transplant Program,

University of Alberta and Alberta Health Services

Background: The primary purpose of the Clinical Islet Laboratory (CIL) at the University of Alberta is to manufacture purified human islets for clinical transplantation.  As a secondary role, the CIL provides human islets and/or pancreatic tissue for basic research when islet preparations do not meet release criteria for transplantation.  The purpose of this report is to highlight the CIL islet distribution activity this past year.

Methods: We reviewed our islet isolation batch files and islet shipment records between July 1, 2008 and June 30, 2009.  During this period, 64 pancreata were recovered from deceased donors and processed for islet isolation with intent to transplant.  Our data were compared to those from the Islet Cell Resource (ICR) Center Consortium annual report 2008.

Results: Research consent was obtained in 41 out of 64 pancreata.  Nine islet preparations went on clinical transplantation; 18 were used for clinical transplantation (islet fraction) and for basic research (non-islet fraction); 23 were shipped for basic research; and 14 were discarded due to insufficient islet yield with no research consent.  Number of researchers receiving islets increased from 8 in 2007 to 11 in 2008.  The CIL distributed 4.9 million IEQs within 117 shipments (excluding non-islet fractions) to 5 investigators at the Alberta Diabetes Institute and 6 others outside of Alberta including Israel.  From these data, it is calculated that each investigator received 42,000 IEQs/shipment at 10.6 times/year.  In contrast, the ICR, consisting of 8 islet processing facilities in the US, distributed 22.3 million IEQs within 878 shipments to 156 approved studies in 2008, resulting in 25,000 IEQs/shipment at 5.6 times/year for each ICR researcher.  Average islet mass produced by the ICR is 2.8 million IEQs/center/year, which is nearly a half of our productivity.

Conclusion: Each researcher in our program has a potential to receive more islets with more frequently than the ICR researcher.  Demand for human islets for basic research seems to exceed the capacity of islet processing center in the ICR consortium.  In contrast, the current supply versus demand ratio seems to be appropriate in our islet distribution program at the University of Alberta.

Key Words: Human islet, Islet isolation, Islet shipment

Presented at Alberta Diabetes Institute Research Day, 2009, Edmonton