One of the few medical centers outfitted to perform islet transplantation, our team isolates islets from a donor's pancreas, then injects them through the skin into the portal vein of the recipient's liver, where they lodge in small blood vessels and release insulin. This procedure temporarily reverses diabetes, allowing many recipients to discard their blood glucose meters, pumps and syringes to live free from diabetes for the first time in their lives.
Because there's a shortage of donor organs to provide islet cells, our islet cell researchers are seeking new approaches to growing insulin-producing cells in the laboratory, and looking for ways to make islets regenerate from adult stem cells that remain in the diabetic pancreas. We are among the world's leaders in the research of immune tolerance therapies: new and safer alternatives to current immunosuppressive drug therapies used to prevent the rejection of islet transplants.
