Leiden Islet Isolation Chamber • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250116 • TakeNode 398303fe-928a-4c53-839e-9dde0e7d8ec6
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/
Front Page • 20250115_1 • Miracles.Media • Link to full text paper PMID_1465965 🔗
Yesterday, Jan 14th 2025, I posted a video of the slideshow and audio track of my talk on the innovative Percoll-UWS density gradient for the purification of canine and human pancreatic islets, at the 5th Congres European Society for Organ Transplantation, Maastricht (The Netherlands) October 7–10, 1991 (1,2).
That paper was presented the next year , in a poster discussion I co-chaired at the 1st International Congress of the Cell Transplant Society in Pittsburgh (USA) May 31–June 3, 1992 (3,4). The conference proceedings paper of that meeting has been published in Transplantation Proceedings in 1992 (5).
The dutch publisher Elsevier, is publishing Transplantation Proceedings from 1997, and provides (restricted) access to full text online.
Science in print is out of date ?
Previous editions (before 1997) of the journal Transplantation Proceedings , were published by Appleton & Lange, like this 1992 paper (5), and full text is not found online. Also, I am afraid, many libraries have thrown away their stocks of print editions. I, myself, have not kept the bulky Transplantation Proceedings volumes I once bought … thrown away for lack of space , and what I kept is not within reach in practice, piled up in the attic, like the many hundreds of scientific slides…
A pdf copy of that 1992 paper is now available below (5) ;) And copies will be added in upcoming updates of those previous posts.
Notes
1) Van der Burg MPM, Guicherit OR, Prins FA, Scherft JP, Frölich M, Gooszen HG. Percoll in UW: efficient iso-osmotic canine and human islet purification. 5th Congres European Society for Organ Transplantation, Maastricht (The Netherlands) October 7–10, 1991.
2) Percoll UWS Purification Pancreatic Islets • ESOT 1991 Talk • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250114 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2025/10/14/
3) Van der Burg MPM, Guicherit OR, Scherft JP, Bruijn JA, Frölich M, Gooszen HG. Islet preservation during isolation: a new concept in cell transplantation. First International Congress of the Cell Transplant Society, Pittsburgh (USA) May 31 – June 3, 1992.
5) Van der Burg MPM, Guicherit OR, Frölich M, Bruijn JA, Gooszen HG. Islet preservation during isolation: a new concept in cell transplantation. Transplant Proc. 1992 Dec;24(6):2840-1. PMID: 1465965.
Percoll UWS Purification Pancreatic Islets • ESOT 1991 Talk • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250114 • TakeNode 459d71fd-069f-4f6d-9c8f-924ebf132222
Two years, after we introduced the UW-Solution ( UWS ) as the islet isolation solution at the 4th ESOT meeting (1,2) , this talk on the innovative Percoll-UWS density gradient for the purification of canine and human pancreatic islets, was presented at the 5th ESOT — Wednesday Oct 9 , 1991, at 2 PM at the 5th ESOT meeting in Maastricht, Netherlands (3) .
That 5th ESOT meeting was recorded on tape by Audio Archives Int. I purchased some tapes, including the tape of that afternoon session that had started with my talk — and found that the taping of this session had started a few minutes too late … during my talk, the moment I started presenting the Results.
That original tape is now included in this remastered slideshow of my talk presented in this video (20250114) here , starting at 2 min 51 sec. Audio of the first part of my speech , missing in the original 5th ESOT tape, I have recorded this week (from the handout of the speech, written out at full lenght) and added as a voice over at the start of this remastered slideshow.
Cassette Tapes , Audio Archives Int, 5th ESOT • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250114_2 • TakeNode 97730a39-b3db-4f56-a08a-77c4d0406be0
Background
In November 1989, I had my first chance for a presentation at a major international conference, the 4th ESOT meeting in Barcelona, of a paper centered on the rationale for employing the University of Wisconsin (UW) organ preservation solution in pancreatic islet isolation.
We demonstrated in 1989, that the use of the UW-Solution ( UWS ) for isolation of canine pancreatic islets prior to ‘conventional’ dextran gradient purification, consistently results in a greatly improved purification outcome, of >90% purified islets, and successful transplantation of the canine islets.
Thus , the UWS was used as the isolation solution both before , and after the purification of islets — but not yet during the purification step, during centrifugation of the pancreatic tissue in a density gradient.
A conventional (Hanks’ balanced salts) solution was still being used for preparing density gradients with dextran in our laboratory.
Following our islet transplants series June-August 1989 , next a working visit in Minneapolis Sep-Oct ’89, and presentations at the Nov ’89 ESOT congress in Barcelona , we had started a new series of islet isolation experiments from December 1989.
During the first two isolations, Dec 1989, of this new series, I wondered whether the dextran gradient could be optimized , for example by layering the islet suspension in UWS (the pancreatic digest suspension) on top of the dextran bottom layer, or perhaps layering the digest on top of a bottom layer of dextran dissolved in UWS…
The new , much shorter, Labcraft density hydrometers, I had purchased during the Minneapolis visit Nov. 1989 , would greatly facilitate designing new density gradients.
The same lot of dextran (Sigma’s industrial-grade dextran) had been used for all these studies. That stock ran out, so a switch was made Jan 2, 1990 to using a new batch of that dextran powder, resulting however in a significantly impaired recovery of islets during purification (4).
Thus, designing a new density gradient became urgent January 1990.
Dextran-UWS Gradient • First density gradient in UW-Solution
March 1990 , new density gradient research was started during islet isolation , splitting the suspension of digested pancreatic tissue (‘digest’) for comparison of different density gradients, of either Sigma’s dextran, and Pharmacia’s essentially pure dextran T70 product in Hanks’ solution … and also the first ‘UW gradient’ tested : a dextran gradient in UW-Solution (4).
Percoll-UWS • Successful density gradient in UW-Solution
From April 1990, dextran T70 was used also in dextran-UW gradients, and islet purification research was further extended that month, by designing a density gradient of Percoll in UW Solution, and from May 1990, designing a Pentastarch-UW gradient. Posters on these new density gradients in UWS were presented June 1991 at the 3rd IPITA Congress in Lyon, France (4,5,6).
The paper presented in this 5th ESOT talk, was presented the next year (1992) again in full detail in a poster at the 1st meeting of the Cell Transplant Society in Pittsburgh , and a remastered edition was posted online recently (7).
Proceedings paper below (8).
Slides originally created on a Macintosh computer October 1991, using the MacDraw II application, with graphs from Cricket Graph. Those 1991 files were remastered this month using LibreOffice, as well as the likewise produced Pittsburgh poster for this video of the 5th ESOT talk. Handout speech and report files originally created in the Mac Desk Accessory ‘Acta’, currently accessed by Opal.
Notes
1) Pancreatic Islet Isolation With UW Solution • A New Concept • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20241224 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2024/12/24/
2) Pancreatic Islet Isolation in UW Solution & Transplantation • ESOT 1989 Talk • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20241229 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2024/12/29/
3) Van der Burg MPM, Guicherit OR, Prins FA, Scherft JP, Frölich M, Gooszen HG. Percoll in UW: efficient iso-osmotic canine and human islet purification. 5th Congres European Society for Organ Transplantation, Maastricht (The Netherlands) October 7–10, 1991.
4) Dextran UWS Pancreatic Islet Purification • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250104 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2025/01/04/
5) Percoll UWS Pancreatic Islet Purification • 20240731 • Michel van der Burg • michelvanderburg•com
6) PentaStarch UWS Pancreatic Islet Purification • 20240802 • Michel van der Burg • michelvanderburg•com
7) Pittsburgh 1992 Cell Transplant Society • 20240812 • Michel van der Burg • michelvanderburg•com
8) Van der Burg MPM, Guicherit OR, Frölich M, Bruijn JA, Gooszen HG. Islet preservation during isolation: a new concept in cell transplantation. Transplant Proc. 1992 Dec;24(6):2840-1. PMID: 1465965. PDF available below PMID_1465965 🔗
End Card
5th Congres European Society for Organ Transplantation, Maastricht (The Netherlands) October 9, 1991 14:00
0:07 Photo taken at 4th ESOT in Barcelona, 1989 (two years earlier)
0:06-2:51 Voice Over Michel van der Burg • Recorded Jan 11th, 2025 • Substitute for audio missing in original tape recording
2:51 Start Original Audio Tape 5th ESOT session by Audio Archives Int
6:52 Start Discussion • Chair : Reinout van Schilfgaarde (Groningen, Netherlands) • With contributions by Bernhard Hering (Giessen, Germany), R. Seelis (Edmonton, Canada), Derek Gray (Oxford, UK), and Reinout van Schilfgaarde (Groningen, Netherlands).
Citation info : Percoll UWS Purification Pancreatic Islets • ESOT 1991 Talk • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250114 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2025/01/14/
DRI Dream Team • Miami 1998 • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • 20250105_1 • TakeNode e6258505-55a8-4365-bb70-7a1dcd7b5426
Team up with researchers at the Diabetes Research Institute in Miami , working on human islet transplantation (1).
“For National Geographic” announced Camillo Ricordi for fun, that Monday , April 27th in 1998 at the Diabetes Research Institute, when the DRI islet isolation team posed in GMP outfit for this picture (2) — with Elina Linetsky on the left , and me standing second from right — taken after finishing our human islet isolation work, including islet purification in the iodixanol gradient in UW-Solution (3).
Notes
1) Working visit April – May 1998 at the “fast track” center of the Diabetes Research Institute (Scientific director Prof. C. Ricordi, MD) of the University of Miami (Miami, FL, USA)
2) Blown up image (from small GIF online in the early DRInet days), taken through a reflecting window.
3) Human Islet Purification Miami 1998 • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • 20181102 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2018/11/02/
Citation info : DRI Dream Team • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250105 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2025/01/05/
Efficacy of the novel iodixanol-UWS density gradient for human islet purification • Igls Aidspit 1999 • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • 20241202_1
I started an archive at Archive.org November 11, 2010 with this slideshow (pdf) of my January 1999 oral presentation in Igls (Innsbruck), Austria, at the 18th Workshop of the AIDSPIT (Artificial Insulin Delivery Systems, Pancreas and Islet Transplantation) Study Group. (Now known as AIDPIT).
The presented results of this innovative islet purification method — developed over nearly 10 years (from 1989) in our Leiden islet laboratory (LUMC) — were the outcome of work I had done spring 1998 with the human islet transplantation group of Camillo Ricordi at the Diabetes Research Institute in Miami , Florida, USA.
Slideshow (pdf) Archive.org
Description
Efficacy of the novel iodixanol-UWS density gradient for human islet purification • Igls Aidspit 1999
Slides oral presentation Michel van der Burg, Aidspit meeting 25 Jan 1999, in Igls, Austria
Van der Burg MPM, Ranuncoli A, Molano R, Kirlew T, Ringers J, Bouwman E, Ricordi C. Efficacy of the novel iodixanol-UWS density gradient for human islet purification. 18th Workshop Aidspit, Igls (Austria) Jan. 24-26, 1999
Program : 18TH WORKSHOP OF THE AIDSPIT STUDY GROUP – JANUARY 24-26, 1999 – IGLS/AUSTRIA . MONDAY, JAN 25, 1999 – KONGRESSHAUS IGLS, MAIN LECTURE HALL SESSION 2 – ISLET ISOLATION AND TRANSPLANTATION CHAIRMEN:K. FEDERLIN, GIESSEN, GERMANY – G. POZZA, MILAN, ITALY 9.00 – 10.30 FREE COMMUNICATIONS 9.45- Efficacy of the novel iodixanol-UWS density gradient for human islet purification. Van der Burg MPM, Ranuncoli A, Molano R, Kirlew T, Ringers J, Bouwman E, Ricordi C; Leiden, The Netherlands and Miami, USA
File : mvdb19990118_1534_AIDSPIT.pdf | Uploaded 20101111 and replaced by the same pdf with updated metadata of the document on 20101112 (see Notes section).
The slideshow video embedded below, was first posted in 2018 as Human Islet Purification Miami 1998 • 20181102
Notes
The slideshow pdf file is available for download at Archive.org. I advise against the other download options presented by Archive.org , which do not correctly represent the slideshow.
Van der Burg MPM, Ranuncoli A, Molano R, Kirlew T, Ringers J, Bouwman E, Ricordi C. Efficacy of the novel iodixanol-UWS density gradient for human islet purification (Abstract). Acta Diabetol 1998; 35: 247.
Citation info (this post) : Efficacy of the novel iodixanol-UWS density gradient for human islet purification • Igls Aidspit 1999 • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • 20241202 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2024/12/02/
Eve…I presume. First, archaic, humans – Homo Erectus – ‘Upright Man’, living from around 2 million years ago. Forensic reconstruction of an adult female Homo erectus last week in the Naturalis Biodiversity Center , Leiden, Holland. Film : 20200302 Michel van der Burg | 1-memo.com
Isolation of Islets of Langerhans for Transplantation in Type-1 Diabetic Patients.
Here a film made of my ‘powerpoint’ presentation Feb 22, 2000 – on behalf of our Surgical Department – at the Opening Symposium of the Interdivisional GMP (‘Good Manufacturing Practice’) facility of the Leiden University Medical Centre – the LUMC in Leiden, Holland.
Background
I first started – with a background in biochemistry and philosophy – some 20 years earlier (from 1981) research at the Department of Surgery of the Leiden University Hospital (AZL) in the field of transplantation of the pancreas organ to cure diabetes.
Succesful Experiment Islet Transplantation
From 1986 my focus shifted to innovative procedures for the isolation out of the pancreas organ, of the ca 1 million islets of Langerhans – the insulin producing cell clumps with a size between ca 0.1 to 1 mm , that is 0.004 to 0,04 inch.
In 1989 we performed the first successful autologous transplantations in Holland (in collaboration with the Minneapolis Islet Lab with Jane Field and David Sutherland) – for the first time world-wide with pure islets using our novel procedure of using the organ preservation UW solution (University of Wisconsin / collaboration with dr Robert Carter , Du Pont, UK) during isolation in a pre-clinical large animal diabetes model – with long term transplant functioning with near-normal blood sugar regulation.
First series of human islet isolations , 1989-1990
Next in 1989-1990 we performed a first series of islet isolations from human donor pancreases using our novel techniques of isolation and purification in UW organ preservation solution – in association with a European Concerted Action for the Treatment of Diabetes – the Brussels headed (Daniel Pipeleers) ‘Multicenter program on the treatment of diabetes by islet cell transplantation’.
Exploring human islet work
Subsequently – after some years of exploring options for animal to human islet transplantation , using pig pancreas islets – so-called xenotransplantation – I was asked in 1997 to explore the requirements for operationalization of clinical islet transplantation in the LUMC. December 1997 our Surgical Department decided to go for it.
Establishing the human islet isolation laboratory in Leiden.
In 1998 after a month working in dr Camillo Ricordi’s Diabetes Research Institute in Miami, I started a large series of human islet isolation procedures in Leiden, and from september 1998 documenting the detailed GMP (‘Good Manufacturing Practice’) standard operating procedures, as well as ‘building’ our clinical islet isolation clean room with help from the Miami team in close cooperation with dr. Amon Wafelman (department of Clinical Pharmacy & Toxicology) managing the building of our brand new Interdivisional GMP-facility LUMC (IGFL) of six clean rooms and two chemical product laboratories – that was opened officially Feb 22, 2000 with the symposium, a film, and a tour in the GMP facility.
One year later the GMP islet facility was fully operational and summer 2001 we got a cautious green light (GMP license) for clinical transplantation of any high quality – approved – islet preparations.
Around the same time islet transplantation suddenly became very promising with ‘The Edmonton protocol’. However with the fast increase of logistic and financial demands, and reorganization between LUMC divisions it took till 2007 to finally start first transplants by an expanded islet team in the LUMC clinical islet center in Leiden.
Worldwide since 2000 several hundred people have received islet transplants that generally do not result in long term insulin independence , but do help sugar regulation in the transplant recipients.
Notes :
Links to some publications, news paper reports etc will follow later.
Updates:
Post updated with more details 20191215
Presentation ‘Isolation of Islets of Langerhans for Transplantation in Type-1 Diabetic Patients’ by Michel van der Burg, Feb 22, 2000 – Opening Symposium of the Interdivisional GMP facility of the Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden, Netherlands. Film : 20191213 Michel van der Burg | miracles.media
