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Recent years have seen an increased focus on human islet biology, and exciting findings in the stem cell and genomic arenas highlight the need to define the key features of mature human islets and β-cells. Donor and organ procurement parameters impact human islet yield, although for research purposes islet yield may be secondary in importance to islet function. We examined the feasibility of a research-only human islet isolation, distribution, and biobanking program and whether key criteria such as cold ischemia time (CIT) and metabolic status may be relaxed and still allow successful research-focused isolations, including from donors with type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes. Through 142 isolations over approximately 5 years, we confirm that CIT and glycated hemoglobin each have a weak negative impacts on isolation purity and yield, and extending CIT beyond the typical clinical isolation cutoff of 12 hours (to ≥ 18 h) had only a modest impact on islet function. Age and glycated hemoglobin/type 2 diabetes status negatively impacted secretory function; however, these and other biological (sex, body mass index) and procurement/isolation variables (CIT, time in culture) appear to make only a small contribution to the heterogeneity of human islet function. This work demonstrates the feasibility of extending acceptable CIT for research-focused human islet isolation and highlights the biological variation in function of human islets from donors with and without diabetes.

The molecular mechanisms underpinning susceptibility loci for type 2 diabetes (T2D) remain poorly understood. Coding variants in peptidylglycine α-amidating monooxygenase (PAM) are associated with both T2D risk and insulinogenic index. Here, we demonstrate that the T2D risk alleles impact negatively on overall PAM activity via defects in expression and catalytic function. PAM deficiency results in reduced insulin content and altered dynamics of insulin secretion in a human β-cell model and primary islets from cadaveric donors. Thus, our results demonstrate a role for PAM in β-cell function, and establish molecular mechanisms for T2D risk alleles at this locus.

Focal adhesion kinase (FAK) acts as an adaptor at the focal contacts serving as a junction between the extracellular matrix and actin cytoskeleton. Actin dynamics is known as a determinant step in insulin secretion. Additionally, FAK has been shown to regulate insulin signaling. To investigate the essential physiological role of FAK in pancreatic β-cells in vivo, we generated a transgenic mouse model using rat insulin promoter (RIP)–driven Cre-loxP recombination system to specifically delete FAK in pancreatic β-cells. These RIPcre+fakfl/fl mice exhibited glucose intolerance without changes in insulin sensitivity. Reduced β-cell viability and proliferation resulting in decreased β-cell mass was observed in these mice, which was associated with attenuated insulin/Akt (also known as protein kinase B) and extracellular signal–related kinase 1/2 signaling and increased caspase 3 activation. FAK-deficient β-cells exhibited impaired insulin secretion with normal glucose sensing and preserved Ca2+ influx in response to glucose, but a reduced number of docked insulin granules and insulin exocytosis were found, which was associated with a decrease in focal proteins, paxillin and talin, and an impairment in actin depolymerization. This study is the first to show in vivo that FAK is critical for pancreatic β-cell viability and function through regulation in insulin signaling, actin dynamics, and granule trafficking.