title: Clinical application of microencapsulated islets: actual prospectives on progress and challenges.
abstract: After 25 years of intense pre-clinical work on microencapsulated intraperitoneal islet grafts into non-immunosuppressed diabetic recipients, the application of this procedure to patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus has been a significant step forward. This result, achieved in a few centers worldwide, underlies the safety of biopolymers used for microencapsulation. Without this advance, no permission for human application of microcapsules would have ever been obtained after years of purification technologies applied to the raw alginates. To improve safety of the encapsulated islet graft system, renewed efforts on the capsules' bioengineering, as well as on insulin-producing cells within the capsular membranes, are in progress. It is hoped that advances in these two critical aspects of the cell encapsulation technology will result in wider human application of this system.
authors.affiliation: Department of Internal Medicine, University of Perugia, Via Enrico dal Pozzo, s.n.c., Perugia 06126, Italy. Electronic address: riccardo.calafiore@unipg.it.
authors.forename: Riccardo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Calafiore
authors.affiliation: Department of Internal Medicine, University of Perugia, Via Enrico dal Pozzo, s.n.c., Perugia 06126, Italy.
authors.forename: Giuseppe
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Basta
mesh_terms: D000464:Alginates / Q000737:chemistry; D000818:Animals; D003922:Diabetes Mellitus, Type 1 / Q000601:surgery*; D020723:Glucuronic Acid / Q000737:chemistry; D006603:Hexuronic Acids / Q000737:chemistry; D006801:Humans; D007165:Immunosuppression Therapy; D007515:Islets of Langerhans / Q000276:immunology; D016381:Islets of Langerhans Transplantation / Q000379:methods*; D011092:Polyethylene Glycols / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D000464:Alginates; D006603:Hexuronic Acids; D011092:Polyethylene Glycols; D020723:Glucuronic Acid
keywords: Alginate; Diabetes; Microcapsules; Therapy