Severe chronic pancreatitis is treated by removing the pancreas. Without a pancreas, patients also lose insulin-producing cells called islets. To preserve insulin responses, surgeons transplant islets to the liver, which has poor outcomes.
New strategy uses a synthetic gel to transplant islets to the omentum, showing promise in small and large animal studies. With the new approach, more islets survived transplantation and grew blood vessels into the omentum.
In studies with mouse and non-human primates, the gel successfully prevented oxidative stress and inflammatory reactions, significantly improving survival and preserving function of transplanted islets. It marks the first time a synthetic antioxidant gel has been used to preserve function of transplanted islets.
"Living without functional islets places a great burden on patients," Burke said."They must learn to count carbs, dose insulin at the appropriate time and continuously monitor blood glucose. This consumes much of their time and mental energy. Even with great care, exogeneous insulin therapy is not as effective as islets for maintaining glucose control. Patients with out-of-range blood glucose will develop complications, such as blindness and amputation.
"There's been significant interest in the research and medical communities to find an alternate islet transplantation site," Ameer said."The results from the omentum study were encouraging, but outcomes were varied. We believe that's because the use of the patients' blood and the added components required to create the biologic gel can affect reproducibility among patients.
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