Effects of anti-oxidizing vitamins on in vitro cultured porcine neonatal pancreatic islet cells

Oxidative stress may cause severe cellular damage to both allo- and xeno-transplanted islets, additional to islet graft-directed immunity, in diabetic patients. We thus aimed to examine the effects of antioxidants on in vitro culture-maintained, neonatal porcine cell clusters (NPCCs), NPCCs were treated with antioxidants (vitamins D-3 and E) by a certain time of their maturation and differentiation process. Insulin recovery showed that both vitamins D-3 and E, unlike untreated controls, resulted in preservation of the islet function for significantly long periods of time. Such effects were also confirmed during NPCCs in vitro static incubation with high glucose, Furthermore, morphologic examination of NPCCs demonstrated that at 16 days of cell culture beta -cell clusters were significantly larger and more intact when exposed to the vitamins as compared to controls. According to these preliminary results, because the employed vitamins, known to retain anti-oxidizing properties, seemed to clearly improve NPCCs morphology and function, they may represent a potentially useful tool for islet culture maintenance in the pre-transplant time period. (C) 2000, Editrice Kurtis.