Islet transplantation is an attractive method to achieve blood glucose homeostasis. However, β-cell function declines over time. Therefore, it is necessary to explore strategies to enhance the β-cell mass and function. Also, because there is a severe shortage of human cadaver tissue, alternative sources of insulin secreting tissue need to be examined. Neonatal porcine islet (NPI) tissue has emerged as an attractive alternative source of β-cells. The aim of this thesis was to optimize the culturing conditions of NPIs pre-transplantation so that the available tissue can be used as efficiently and economically as possible.
The results from this study indicate that the treatment of NPI cultures with z-VAD-FMK, a pan caspase inhibitor and general protease inhibitor significantly enhances β-cell survival. Additionally, the optimum length of culturing NPIs pre-transplantation appears to be 3-5 days. Since widespread cell death stimulates immunogenic response, this treatment also has the potential benefit of reducing immunosuppression needs in the recipient. / Experimental Surgery
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:AEU.10048/489 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Sidhu, Satinder K. |
| Contributors | Korbutt, Greg (Surgery), Korbutt, Greg (Surgery), Rayat, Gina (Surgery), Chan, Catherine (Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science) |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 636365 bytes, application/pdf |
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