Grant: Emerging Team Grant: Regenerative Medicine and Nanomedicine - LOI

In 2007, the Canadian Diabetes Association reported that over 246 millions people have diabetes, including more than 2 millions Canadians. The financial burden of diabetes and its complications on the Canadian healthcare system is enormous. One of the major defects in diabetes is the loss of insulin-producing cells. A major challenge in the treatment of diabetes is to replace the missing insulin-producing cells to prevent late complications. The engineering of a bioartificial endocrine pancreas device could become an essential element in creating novel cell-based approaches for the treatment of diabetes. However, development and function of insulin-producing cells embedded in tissue constructs is compromised by lack of capillary development and adequate local biosignalling causing function loss. Also, it is extremely difficult to gather good resolution images of islets located in 3D assemblages. Because of these limitations, culture and fabrication of bioartificial endocrine pancreas devices are poorly advanced and understood. Therefore, the general objective of our interdisciplinary Team of 5 professors from 3 universities across Canada is to develop and validate a bioartificial endocrine pancreas device. The main concept proposed here consists to engineer and validate bioactive scaffolds to modulate islet growth and functions. A perfusion implantation chamber that combines bioactive scaffolds allowing the development and function of vascularised endocrine pancreatic islets will be developed and validated both in vitro (bioreactor cultures) and in vivo to test the function of this device to control glycaemia. This project combines biomaterials and tissue engineering methods with cell biology, surgery, and non-invasive imaging techniques to support and assess the development and functions of a novel bioartificial endocrine pancreas device. Our interdisciplinary research program will yield valuable findings to the scientific, clinical, and industrial communities.