PHOTOINITIATED CONFORMAL ISLET ENCAPSULATION MATRICES

胰岛素依赖型糖尿病影响着世界上数百万人， 美国 尽管经过多年的深入研究， 目前的治疗方案仍然有限， 复制健康胰腺的血糖控制。一个潜在 治疗这种疾病的方法是同种异体移植， 或异种胰岛细胞。的最大障碍 这种方法的发展是免疫排斥的 小岛免疫分离胰岛包封方法和 已经研究了材料以克服该障碍，但是它们的 严格的技术要求阻碍了发展 此应用程序所需的。 拟议的项目代表了一种新的技术方法， 胰岛封装的挑战。 所提出的技术具有 提供围绕每一个的薄的适形胶囊的潜在能力 从而改善微囊化 制造率，胰岛的营养供应， 减少移植物的体积。成功展示了 拟议的技术将对未来的发展方向产生深远的影响。 胰岛微囊化研究，加快胰岛微囊化技术的发展。 生物人工胰腺 拟定商业应用： 胰岛素依赖型糖尿病影响着世界上数百万人， 美国开发一种技术，提供血糖控制， 未使用外源性胰岛素的糖尿病患者， 商业利益和整个社会的利益。

Insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus affects millions of persons in the U.S. Despite years of intensive research, the effectiveness of current therapeutic regimens remains limited due to the difficulty of duplicating the glycemic control of a healthy pancreas. A potential method of treating this disease is the transplantation of allogeneic or xenogeneic pancreatic islet cells. The most significant obstacle to the development of this approach is the immune rejection of the islets. Immune-isolating islet encapsulation methodologies and materials have been investigated to overcome this obstacle, but their development has been hampered by the stringent technical requirements needed for this application. The proposed project represents a new approach to the technical challenges of islet encapsulation. The proposed technology possesses the potential ability to provide a thin conformal capsule around each individual islet in a facile manner, thereby improving microcapsule fabrication rates, nutrient supply to the islets, and significantly reducing the volume of the graft. A successful demonstration of the proposed technology would have a profound impact on the direction of islet encapsulation research and accelerate the development of the bio-artificial pancreas. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION: Insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus affects millions of persons in the U.S. The development of a technology that provides glycemic control to diabetic patients without the use of exogenous insulin is of obvious interest to commercial interests and society at large.