Following a working visit February ’92 studying pig islet isolation at the ‘Fondation Transplantation’ in Strasbourg -Hautepierre, France (1) , I designed this islet isolation chamber March 1992 for use in our Leiden Islet Laboratory , together with Gerard Verschagen , head of the precision mechanics workshop of the Laboratory of Physiology of the University Hospital Leiden (AZL , now LUMC), who manufactured this and other of our islet isolation devices.

The chamber was designed with support for use together with the Retsch Vibro Sieving Machine , purchased earlier for our Leiden Islet Laboratory, a vibrating sieving machine I had used in the 70s for isolation cell nuclei (2). The design was based on the Ricordi chamber published 4 years earlier (3).

The drawing was originally designed and produced on a Macintosh computer March 1992, using the MacDraw II application. That Mac file was remastered today in LibreOffice Vanilla, by straightening most of the lines that are slanted after opening in LibreOffice and correcting the font changes. So , not accurate now probably … just for illustration the history of progress in our Leiden Islet Laboratory, and love for art ;)

Notes

1) Xeno Islets • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250113 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2025/01/13/

2) Mennes AM, Bouman H, Van der Burg MPM, Libbenga KR. RNA synthesis in isolated
tobacco callus nuclei, and the influence of phytohormones. Plant Sci Lett 1978; 13: 329– 339, ISSN 0304-4211, https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-4211(78)90210-9.

3) Piemonti L, Pileggi A. 25 Years Of The Ricordi Automated Method For Islet Isolation. CellR4 Repair Replace Regen Reprogram. 2013;1(1):e128. PMID: 30505878; PMCID: PMC6267808. URL https://www.cellr4.org/article/128

Citation info : Leiden Islet Isolation Chamber • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250116 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2025/01/16/