Xenotransplantation of the Pancreas: A Reality Check of Its Historical Emergence

Weaver Cyprian

doi:10.23937/2377-3634/1410131

Abstract

Recent advancements being made in the humanization of Crispr-based gene-edited animals have now provided a sophisticated molecular platform for exogenic organ production and xenotransplantation. Although this amazing and novel medical step into the future holds significant therapeutic promise for pancreas xenotransplantation presently impeded by lack of sufficient donors, its origins arose in an era that is often portrayed as an age of medical quackery and iatrogenesis. The present study re-examines the historical and cultural context in which the first pancreatic xenografts which preceded any attempt at allotransplantation emerged as an interventional force within clinical medicine during the mid-1800s into the early part of the 1900s.

Highlights

The present study reexamines the historical and cultural context in which the first pancreatic xenografts which preceded any attempt at allotransplantation emerged as an interventional force within clinical medicine during the mid-1800s into the early part of the 1900s. It focuses on the advances and scientific findings that arose historically as a consequence of the newly diagnosed state of diabetes mellitus in the mid-1800s
Dynamics were set into motion whereby the current theory of internal secretion would initiate a struggle between hormone replacement theory per se and organ replacement
Diabetes as a disease characterized by excess loss of urine and its ‘sweet’ quality was known in the East for centuries and named diabetes by Aretaeus in 2nd century AD, it was not until the 17th century that the characteristic quality of urine and blood began to take on clinical significance

Summary

Introduction

Diabetes as a disease characterized by excess loss of urine and its ‘sweet’ quality was known in the East for centuries and named diabetes by Aretaeus in 2nd century AD, it was not until the 17th century that the characteristic quality of urine and blood began to take on clinical significance. Laguesse’s work was quickly noted and found support in Schafer’s observations reported in 1895, in that: “The only fact that appears certain in connection with the manner in which the pancreas prevents excessive production of sugar within the body is that this effect must be produced by the formation of some material, secreted internally by the gland and probably by the interstitial vascular islets [41] It was largely the observations and analyses of pathological states of the organ that led to another Russian, the physician Leonid Ssobolew, to conclude in his experiments (1900-02) that the islets which lacked ducts and were highly vascularized were the anatomical and functional structures within the pancreas that controlled carbohydrate metabolism [42,43]. It was during this first decade of the 1900’s that xenotransplantation of islets was further explored for its value in reversing diabetes

A Piscine Discovery

A New Method of Isolation