Poll Lecture brings expert on islet transplantation to UW

Dr. Daniel Pipeleers, who directs the largest human islet isolation program in the world, will present the eighth annual Harvey and Judy Poll Visiting Scholar Lecture at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, March 18, in room K-069 of the Health Sciences Center.

Pipeleers will speak on "Islet Transplantation." The lecture is open to the public and will be geared for a public audience. It is sponsored by the Robert H. Williams Laboratory and the School of Medicine.

Pipeleers is professor and director of the Diabetes Centerat the Free University of Brussels in Belgium. He directs the Beta Cell Transplant Study, a concerted European project for the treatment of diabetes, which is now conducting a clinical trial on human islet transplantation. The group is implanting highly purified, insulin-producing islets, which naturally occur in the pancreas, into the liver of the recipient. The islets are gathered from several donors for each recipient. If eventually successful, such transplants could be an alternative to the daily injections of insulin now needed by all Type 1 diabetes patients.

Pancreas transplants are already possible, but Dr. Ake Lernmark, UW professor of medicine and head of the Williams Laboratory, said that islet transplantation may be more effective. The islets of Langerhans, which produce insulin, constitute only 2 percent of the pancreas, with most of the rest devoted to producing gastric juices. Most naturally produced insulin goes to the liver, he noted, and results from transplanting islets directly into the liver have been excellent in animal trials.

Methods to separate islet cell sub-populations, developed by Pipeleers, have made it possible to study pure insulin-producing cells. In this work, he discovered that the insulin-producing cells differ from each other in their ability to sense how much glucose is in the blood, a finding with significance for understanding Type 2 diabetes.

Pipeleers will also give a scientific presentation at 4:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 17, in room D-209 of the Health Sciences Center, speaking on "The Beta Cell Versus Glucotoxicity."

Among the honors he has received are the Minkowski Prize of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes and the Merck Sharp & Dohme Prize awarded by the Belgian Fund For Scientific Research. He has been a visiting scientist at Washington University in St. Louis and has since given several major lectures in the United States, including the Kroc Lecture at the UW in 1989.

The Harvey and Judy Poll Visiting Scholar Endowment was established in 1990 by the couple. The Polls have a long-standing interest in diabetes research and its advancement at the UW. The endowment makes it possible to invite distinguished scholars in the field of diabetes research to the UW, fostering new collaborations with diabetes investigators around the world.

For more information on Pipeleers' visit, contact Jennifer Hazelbrook at Medical Affairs Development, 543-5686.

Claire Dietz