Spinal Fluid Driven Artificial Organ
Dr. Ommaya has two children who suffer from Type 1 diabetes. Motivated by his personal experience with the disease, Dr. Ommaya focused on the problem of transplantation of islet cells for the treatment of diabetes. A major challenge facing survival of islet cells is immune rejection. Dr. Ommaya thought that the CSF would provided an ideal setting for transplanted islets due to the immune protection provided by the blood brain barrier. He developed an artificial organ which would house transplanted islets, and the cells could be nourished by the CSF. Ayub, Illani Atwater, and colleagues identified that ventricular-peritoneal CSF shunts provided an immune protected site for the transplantation of mouse and rat islets in dogs and llamas.22, 30 Ayub and colleagues also identified that CSF glucose mirrors blood glucose. Islets cells were able to survive in this system and function in the llama model, but further work on the model is needed.1 Unfortunately Dr. Ommaya was not able to complete this research.
Read more about this topic: Ayub K. Ommaya
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