Alberta Diabetes Institute IsletCore, Canada

Certification Status: Approved
Registration Status: Completed

Objective: Isletcore is a human islet isolation, research, distribution, and biobanking facility located in a state-of-the art laboratory on the 5th floor of the Alberta Diabetes Institute. Our goal is to isolate, bank, and distribute human islets specifically for research purposes from donor pancreas that would not otherwise be used in clinical transplantation. Our research-specific focus allows the use of organs from donors with type 1 diabetes (T1D) and type 2 diabetes (T2D), as well as other non-standard donors so that researchers can better understand the processes contributing to islet health and dysfunction. We isolate and distribute human islets from a range of donor types to laboratories worldwide for the study of diabetes. We bank functional islets by cryopreservation, for future research and use with emerging technologies to facilitate diabetes research.

Registered Biobank Name Alberta Diabetes Institute IsletCore
Biobank Leader Dr Patrick MacDonald
Country Canada
Email for biobank inquiries pem@ualberta.ca
Principal Investigator Dr Patrick MacDonald
Website http://www.bcell.org/isletcore.html
User Type
  • Mono: A biobank that supports a specific research project, may have few staff members, a small-scale accrual scope with little to no initial intention of releasing or distributing biospecimens to secondary parties
  • Oligo: A biobank that supports several research groups or clinical trials, may or may not be designed to release biospecimens outside their collaborative group
  • Poly: A biobank that has generally a larger accrual scope, resources, and multiple users outside the biobank proper
Poly - Collection aimed at supporting undetermined, multiple users with ethics approved research projects, through a defined access/application mechanism.
Biospecimen Collected: