Gastric submucosa is inferior to the liver as transplant site for autologous islet transplantation in pancreatectomized diabetic Beagles.

Intraportal transplantation of islets is no longer considered to be an ideal procedure and finding the extrahepatic alternative site is becoming a subject of high priority. Herein, in this study, we would introduce our initial outcomes of using gastric submucosa (GS) and liver as sites of islet autotransplantation in pancreatectomized diabetic Beagles. Total pancreatectomy was performed in Beagles and then their own islets extracted from the excised pancreas were transplanted into GS (GS group, n=8) or intrahepatic via portal vein (PV group, n=5). Forty-eight hours post transplantation, graft containing tissue harvested from the recipients revealed the presence of insulin-positive cells. All recipients in GS group achieved euglycemia within 1 day, but returned to a diabetic state at 6 to 8 days post-transplantation (mean survival time, 7.16±0.69 days). However, all of the animals kept normoglycemic until 85 to 155 days post-transplantation in PV group (mean survival time, 120±28.58 days; P<0.01 vs. GS group). The results of intravenous glucose tolerance test (IVGTT) confirmed that the marked improvement in glycometabolism was obtained in intrahepatic islet autotransplantation. Thus, our findings indicate that the liver is still superior to the GS as the site of islet transplantation, at least in our islet autotransplant model in pancreatectomized diabetic Beagles.