PELOAcademy: Overcoming the Challenges of Low Islet Recovery from Young Organ Donors.

12. November 2020
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presented by Balamurugan N. Appakalai, Ph.D. Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH; USA

Date: live Nov 19, 2020
Time: 5 PM

Join here: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/214155589045030160

Human islet isolation from young donors is problematic. Application of standard islet isolation methods to donor pancreata less than 32 years old (YO) often results in low islet recovery. Low recovery reflects the ineffectiveness of current methods to separate the islets from acinar tissue, leading to high percentages of mantled/embedded islets. These islet-acinar cellular aggregates are too dense to be purified by density gradient centrifugation.

Several reports described methods to improve islet yields from younger donors, but other laboratories have not adopted these methods.
My laboratory described a novel approach to this problem by comparing the effect of different collagenase-protease enzyme mixtures on islet yields from young donors. For these islet isolations, the pancreas was split into head, body, and tail, with each portion digested with a different enzyme mixture by leading companies like VitaCyte, Roche or Nordmark.

Find out more about the how the results show a path forward to overcome poor islet recoveries associated with young donor pancreas. The proof of the method depends on others assessing the benefits of using the modified enzyme formulations. Future studies will focus on further optimization of the dose and enzyme composition to increase islet recovery and function from these organ donors.