Towards curing type 1 diabetes: Prospects and challenges of allogeneic or xenogeneic donor islet cell transplantation

Figure 3 Graphic presentation of clinical islet transplantation. A-C: Donated islets are purified from donor pancreas (A) and transplanted via the portal vein of the recipient patient (B). A total of 2170 patients received clinical islet transplantation worldwide over 20 years. The donated islets reside in the liver to perform the regulatory roles of glucose homeostasis. Nevertheless, due to the profound shortage of donated pancreases, over 99% of the 5 million patients with labile diabetes were unfortunately not able to receive the life-saving clinical islet transplantation therapy (C).