Bioengineering approaches to islet transplantation for management of diabetes

Human islet transplantation, as currently carried out by portal vein infusion in the liver, can provide good glycaemic control in diabetic patients and can significantly reduce the need to inject exogenous insulin. Perhaps the main challenge in islet transplantation is the need for life long immunosuppression which is highly undesirable due to side effects resulting in poor quality of life. Unquestionably, there has been significant progress in clinical islet transplantation, but many challenges are yet to be overcome. This calls for novel approaches to make islet based therapies more practical, sustainable and economical. By preventing adverse immune reaction and creating an environment that would reduce death of the grafted cells islet transplantation strategies can be vastly improved. Here we discuss various bioengineering approaches that are currently in development to achieve desirable outcome in islet transplantation within a clinical setting