Information for a new user

Information for a new user Version 5.1

General information

The primary purpose of the Clinical Islet Laboratory (CIL) at the University of Alberta/Alberta Health Services is to manufacture human islets for clinical transplantation.  Therefore, every single isolation performed at the CIL is intended for clinical transplantation.  As a secondary role, the CIL provides human islets and/or pancreatic tissue for basic research only when islet preparation is not suitable for clinical transplantation and appropriate research consent is obtained from donor and/or donor family.

Purity of islets

One thing you may notice is that purity of islets is generally low; it is very rare for you to receive highly purified islets (>90%) from us.  Why?  As mentioned above, our primary focus is to obtain a higher islet yield for clinical transplant.  There is a trade-off between purity of islets and islet yield recovered (see Figure below).  Obtaining an extremely high purity of islets requires sacrificing a less pure layer, which contains a considerable amount of islets.  We do not do this approach.  We usually include a less pure layer to a final preparation to maximize islet yield, but keep packed tissue volume <5 mL.  That’s why our islet preparations typically have a purity of 30-60%.

(a) If the cutoff is moved down to “X” from “Y”, the islet mass falls but the purity rises.

(b) If there are more trapped islets, islet curve shifts to the right.  If exocrine enzyme is discharged, exocrine curve shifts to the left.

Re-purification or hand-picking

If you need highly purified islets and contaminating acinar tissue interferes your study, you may want to consider re-purification or hand-picking islets.

Re-purification may negatively affect your islet viability.  Also you may lose significant amount of islets after re-purification.

Hand-picking under microscope consistently gives highly purified islets.  However, the procedure is time consuming and labor intensive.  You also need to have considerable experience to distinguish islet from exocrine tissue without DTZ stain.

The pictures below are taken from the same islet preparation.

Frequency of receiving islets and amount of islets per shipment

This information can be obtained from ANNUAL REPORTS.

Cost for receiving islets

Only thing you have to consider is shipping cost.  We need to know your FedEx Account Number.  We use only FedEx as a courrier.

$0 / IEQ for academic institute

$0 / IEQ for non-academic institute

No culture medium fee

No handling fee

Feedback form and Shipment form

You will receive islets along with a shipment form (please see Forms Cabinet page).  We request you to fill out the lower part of the shipment form and send us back through e-mail as soon as you receive islets.  Alternatively you may use a feedback form (please see Forms Cabinet page).  When you use a feedback form instead of a shipment form, please make it sure that you fill out all information including islet lot#.  You may be removed from our list without notification if you do not send us feedback in a timely manner.

Notice of shipment

We do not ask you in advance whether or not you accept islet shipping on each occasion.

For investigators in USA, you most likely receive islets from Tuesday to Friday.

When you do not need islets

Please notify us (Tatsuya Kin, Director) in advance when you do not need islets.  For example, you have to notify us if your laboratory is closing for a certain period of time (example, Christmas holidays).  Please remember we work 24 a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year as long as donor is available.

For investigators out side of the University of Alberta:

You will be notified shipment through FedEx e-mail notification system.  You can also track shipment through FedEx tracking system, so you can prepare your experiment in advance.

For the University of Alberta investigators:

As of January 2025, we have 4 principle investigators at the University of Alberta.  We notify pick-up time to investigators through e-mail or phone with/without text message, or both.  We encourage you to communicate each other within the University of Alberta when you pick up other’s islets in addition to your islets to avoid a dry run.  We understand each investigator has daily scheduled work.  Receiving research islets may compromise your schedule.  Therefore, we try to let you know pick-up time as soon as possible.  However, too early notification of pick-up time may create problems as well, because we may have to change pick-up time based on our staff availability; it is difficult for us to schedule our work because of uncertainty of clinical activity.

January 14, 2025