Recent News

The landmark NIH Registration Trial of Clinical Islet Transplantation has been published. This shows that islet transplantation provides robust protection from severe hypoglycemia and excellent glycemic control over 2 years.

We have published outcomes from our program over the last 20 years - showing long term protection from hypoglycemia, lower A1c and insulin requirements in those with sustained graft function

A study of quality of life after islet transplantation from the patient's point of view has been published which gives a different perspective than we usually hear.

We've recently developed a tool (the BETA-2 score) which allows us to calculate a score to measure the function of an islet transplant from a single fasting blood test. This will allow us to monitor function more easily and more frequently over time. There is even an online tool to calculate the score.

The HYPO score is a tool used to assess the frequency and severity of hypoglycaemia. We've got a tool to help automate its calculation.

Clinical Trials 

   If you wish to register your interest to volunteer for one of our current or future research studies, please click here. 

  If you want to hear about other research studies for diabetes, you can register at www.connect1d.ca, or the Alberta Diabetes Institute

Current Trials

    Polyclonal Regulatory T cell (PolyTreg) Immunotherapy in Islet Transplantation - recruiting NOW

     Polyclonal Regulatory T cells (PolyTregs) are a sub-set of specialized regulatory cells that have demonstrated immune protection of transplant grafts in pre-clinical models, and may hold great promise in clinical islet transplantation. PolyTRegs are harvested and expanded from a recipient's whole blood prior to islet transplantation and infused several weeks after the islet transplant procedure. The anticipation is that the infused PolyTregs will protect the islet graft from the recipient's immune response and the patient will require less immune suppression drugs over the lifetime of the graft. For more information about the PolyTreg trial, please contact one of our study coordinators: Email: citp@ualberta.ca

"Regular" Clinical Islet Transplants

A summary of progress in the Islet Transplant Program has been published in the Canadian Journal of Diabetes.

Information for Canadian Residents

Islet transplant information: MyHealth.Alberta -   What is an islet transplant? (alberta.ca) (includes the links to the islet transplant videos)

Contact our program at: 780-407-3905 or isletprogram@ahs.ca 

For an application and be directed to the islet transplant education materials on MyHealth.Alberta

The following individuals are closely involved with the Clinical Islet Transplant Program ni Edmonton:

•     Dr. James Shapiro (Director / Transplant Surgeon)

•     Dr. Peter Senior (Medical Director/Endocrinologist)  

•     Dr Anna Lam (Endocrinologist)

•     Dr. David Bigam (Transplant Surgeon)

•     Dr. Khaled Dajani (Transplant Surgeon)

•     Dr. Blaire Anderson (Transplant Surgeon)

Information for International Residents

US and international inquiries regarding islet transplant programs outside of Canada should be directed to:

Clinical Islet Transplantation Consortium

or

Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International

For more information contact the Clinical Islet Transplant Program in Edmonton:

2-132 Li Ka Shing Centre for Health Research Innovation

Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E1

• 780-492-2709 (phone)

• 780-492-7499 (fax)

• Email: citp@ualberta.ca