Islet transplantation is a promising therapeutic option for type 1 diabetes, and actively performed in the clinic as well
as in the animal experiments. For the rodent experiments, islet transplantation into kidney subcapsule is widely used to assess
islet quality, however, it is often difficult to do using a polyethylene tubing and fine needle because of inherent dead volume
of needle and stickiness of the tubing to islets. This problem makes it difficult to interpret the physiological response
to different islet doses. Here, we developed a simple fibrin gel carrier system for islet transplantation into kidney subcapsule
and utilized it to determine the marginal islet mass sufficient for correction of hyperglycemia in diabetic nude mice.
Keywords Diabetes - Islet transplantation - Fibrin gel - Marginal mass