Friday, February 03, 2006


A historic day.
Our institution's very first islet cell transplant. Though I wasn't directly involved in this case, everyone in the division of endocrinology's all hyped up.
Transplantation of pancreatic islets of Langerhans, either cadaveric or auto-transplant. Isolated and purified. The portal vein is then cannulated by the interventional radiologist, who then injects the islets in. Colonizes the liver, and starts producing insulin!
Though there is much to improve still as the technique hasn't yielded good longterm viability, this is an exciting step towards curing type 1 diabetes.
I doubt we'll see this in Malaysia in the next 50 years. In fact, I'm not sure if we even do pancreatic transplants for type 1 DM (can anyone enlighten me?).