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Why are isolated pancreatic islet cells difficult to transplant successfully?
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transplant
British surgeon Andrew Ready flushing a donated kidney during a transplant at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, England, 2006.
The transplantation of isolated pancreatic islets is challenging primarily due to two factors:
- Procurement difficulties: It is very difficult to obtain a sufficient quantity of healthy islets from a fibrotic human pancreas.1
- Susceptibility to rejection: Isolated islets appear to be highly susceptible to rejection by the recipient's immune system.1
In general, transplant rejection is driven by cell-mediated immunity, where T lymphocytes identify foreign antigens on the graft and initiate its destruction. While vascularized pancreas transplants have shown more encouraging results with higher survival rates, isolated islet grafting remains a complex area of clinical research.21