World's largest islet transplant program has changed the lives of many people with diabetes, after 20 years of perfecting their technique. The team behind the largest islet cell transplant program in the world reports the procedure is a safe, reliable and life- changing treatment for people with hard-to-control diabetes. In the results published in May 2022 in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, the researchers report on patient survival, graft survival, insulin independence and protection from life-threatening low blood sugars for 255 patients who have received a total of more than 700 infusions of islets at the University of Alberta Hospital over the past two decades.

“We've shown very clearly that islet transplantation is an effective therapy for patients with difficult-to-control Type 1 diabetes,” says James Shapiro, professor of surgery at the University of Alberta, Canada Research Chair in regenerative medicine and transplant surgery, and the lead of the team that developed the protocol known as the Edmonton Protocol. “This long-term safety data gives us confidence that we are doing the right thing.”

“This data shows really strong proof that cell-based therapies can deliver a meaningful and transformative impact for people with diabetes,” says Peter Senior, Charles A. Allard Chair in Diabetes Research and director of the Alberta Diabetes Institute. “We are delivering something which all other treatments for diabetes don't deliver - there's a comfort, a predictability, a stability to blood sugar levels that don't exist with anything else.”