A new study! Does it matter if we keep research islEts in a dish over the weekend?

We've just posted a new study, which you can find here.

One of the most rewarding things we do is provide pancreatic islets from organ donors to researchers around the world, so that the community can learn more about diabetes and transplantation. This program is something we're always looking to improve. By isolating the islets and putting them in a dish or test tube, researchers can perform all kinds of studies aimed at generating new understanding of diabetes, testing new therapies, or approaches to islet transplantation. It might come as no surprise though that when they are taken out of the pancreas, islets don't work the same way that they do while in the pancreas, or even when the pancreas is in the human body! Furthermore, when we keep the islets in a dish, they may change over time, becoming even less like they normally would be in the body.

In order to interpret research studies on isolated islets, it's important to know how they change when sitting in a dish for several days (we call that 'in cell culture'). In fact, we often lose islets from the time they are isolated to the time that we take them out of the dish for experiments or when we ship to other researchers (we don't misplace them! But we also don't really know much about what happens to them either... likely they die or fragment into smaller pieces). This is important since we ship islets all around the world for different studies, and if we isolate islets on a Friday we usually can't ship them out until the following Monday! That's what this study focused on: How much are the islets changing if we have to wait several days? Do we lose more islets if we wait longer?

We looked at how the number and quality of islets changed from the time they were first isolated to the time that we shipped them out of our facility for research studies. We analyzed nearly 200 islet isolations and found that the number of islets often decreased by about 25% during the culture process, likely due to fragmentation (and loss of the smaller fragments). This was particularly significant within the first 24 hours after isolation. Importantly though, the quality, recovery, and functionality of the islets did not deteriorate further with extended culture times up to 136 hours.

Why It Matters: For researchers, understanding the factors that affect islet quality can help in designing better experiments and ensuring that they are working with the best possible materials. We were worried that having to wait (over a weekend for example) to ship islets to researchers for their studies may have detrimental consequences. The bad news: there seems to be islet fragmentation and loss after culture, confirming that islets are not quite the same after isolation as they are when in the pancreas (something that we and others have known for a long time). The good news: Most of these changes happen within 24 hours, with little further negative effect if we have to keep the islets in culture longer. So while we don't love the islet loss and fragmentation that happens, at least it doesn't get any worse if we have to wait a few days longer. 

As we learn more about how to optimize islet isolation and culture, we can improve the outcomes for research studies and, ultimately, for patients who might benefit from these advancements. The work in this study may not be particularly ground-breaking, if I have to be honest, but it's a good example of how our team is continually looking to improve our understanding of what is happening in our processes and make meaningful improvements in the work we do. By identifying the factors that influence islet quality and functionality we can provide valuable insights that can help researchers and clinicians better utilize these important resources.