Islets Encapsulated in Photopolymerizable Alginate

Diabetes affects 11,000 people in America and 60,000 new cases are diagnosed every year. The transpencapsulated, immunoprotected islets as a treatment has recently generated much interest. The minuteof glucose achievable by this technique is not possible by conventional therapeutic techniques and imorbidity of diabetes. We have developed a novel alginate material for islet encapsulation that is nnoninflammatory and is stable in vivo for the long-term. The material is photocrosslinkable in additcrosslinkability. This allows for a single-step, rapid encapsulation process while previous methodsand relatively long periods for efficient encapsulation. We have been able to reverse diabetes for areceiving encapsulated rat islets with this material. In the Phase l study we propose to perform encof pig islets into spontaneously diabetic dogs to test the feasibility of this technique in the xenoacute material toxicity and mutagenicity analysis will be performed. In Phase II we propose to obtaiefficacy data in dogs and obtain FDA approval to begin clinical trials of the procedure in humans. Pin the study due to the potential unlimited availability of pig pancreata from herds that will be spcommercial purpose.