ABSTRACT
The first human pancreatic islet transplant was reported in 1924 when Pybus transplanted fragments of cadaveric pancreatic tissue into two patients, one of whom had a reduction in glucose excretion (1). It was not until 1990 when the first human case of insulin independence following islet transplantation was reported in a 36-year-old patient who had undergone previous kidney transplantation (2). Success was, however, short-lived, and insulin had to be restarted 25 days post-transplantation. In the following decade, although results varied between centers, outcomes of pancreatic islet cell transplant remained generally poor overall with a 1-year insulin independence of only approximately 11% (3).
