Chemical Strategies for Improving Islet Transplant Outcomes

Islet transplantation has proven to be a viable treatment for individuals suffering from both Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1D) and chronic pancreatitis.However, a variety of challenges limit the effectiveness of this procedure by reducing the number of islets that survive the harvesting and transplantation processes.Increasing islet survival would increase the longterm effectiveness of the procedure and allow this technique to be used in more patients.A number of factors have been shown to improve the outcomes of pancreatic islet transplantation, including immunological suppression and prevention of coagulation.In this review, we will discuss various chemical strategies reported in the literature for the preservation of islet graft function after transplantation, including islet encapsulation, the adoption of anti-inflammatory and immune suppressing molecules, and islet surface modification.