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Human Islets For Research (HIR)

Prodo Labs provides high quality human islets for research as its primary service business by direct contracts with both biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, utilizing them for in vitro and in vivo testing in the development of new drugs for diabetes. Contracts with specific Organ Procurement Organizations are made to deliver human research pancreases from United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) from listed cadaver organ donors that are refused for primary human pancreas transplantation or isolated islet transplanted into listed diabetic recipients. Using Prodo Labs’ protocols and kits, the human pancreases are delivered under controlled temperature conditions directly from the recovering hospital to Prodo Labs with appropriate paper work confirming documented informed consent. Each cadaver organ donor has to meet specific criteria including freedom from specific diseases, risks, and blood test and drug screen results in order for Prodo Labs to accept these research pancreases for processing into human islets for research. Since Prodo Labs is not directly involved in clinical islet transplantation, all islets processed from each human pancreas are available to be delivered to the diabetes investigators contracting for them. The islets are held on tissue culture for 2-3 days to assure they are of high quality before shipping them to researchers as many preparations do not show their damage from the donation and processing until a day or so past processing when some islet preparations fall apart.

Specific quality control tests are made on each human islet preparation prior to delivery and recorded and sent to the researchers with the islets or to follow the shipment, depending on the type of testing. Some of these tests are requested to be repeated upon receipt by the investigator with their results returned to Prodo Labs so any discrepancies in those results can be noted and investigated.

Corporate investigators can have contracts that designate them as Preferred Recipients which are those that establish a monthly need for a specified amount of human islets to be delivered, or as Ad Hoc Recipients which are those that only request human islets on an as needed basis. Preferred Recipients have advantages in lower pricing for this service and a higher priority for receiving human islets that are available than do Ad Hoc Recipients. Please click on the link at the bottom of the page for the complete technical notes.

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