Pancreatic islet isolation from donor pancreases is an essential step for the transplantation of insulin-secreting β-cells as a therapy to treat type 1 diabetes mellitus. This process however damages islet basement membranes, which can lead to islet dysfunction or death. Posttransplantation, islets are further stressed by a hypoxic environment and immune reactions that cause poor engraftment and graft failure. The current standards to assess islet quality before transplantation are destructive procedures, performed on a small islet population that does not reflect the heterogeneity of large isolated islet batches. In this study, we
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