Human Pancreas Organ Slices as a Platform for Investigating the Immunopathological Processes of Type 1 Diabetes

摘要

Using live human pancreas slices, the interactions, migration, and effector functions of endogenous and introduced engineered immune cells within the human pancreas tissue can be visually tracked dynamically. Features such as in situ islets, peri-islet basement membrane, vasculature, and endogenous immune cells remain intact. These initial successes are guiding our development of pancreas slices for further detailed three-dimensional studies of islet-immune cell interactions relevant to human T1D. This technology has strong potential as a fully human platform for understanding the etiopathology of T1D and testing interventional therapies that act in the local islet immune microenvironment.