Congress of The Transplantation Society, Lobby of the Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco, California, USA, August 1990 • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250118_1 • TakeNode 4af71bca-edaa-4adb-9dce-556534844f5b
Following papers presented in 1989 demonstrating that over 90% pure islets are isolated from pancreases when using the UW organ preservation solution (1), the outcome of transplantation of highly purified UW-isolated islets was reported in a proceedings paper presented August 1990 at the XIII International Congress of The Transplantation Society in San Francisco, USA (2,3). The Transplantation Proceedings paper, published Feb 1991 is now available online below (3).
Notes
1) Pancreatic Islet Isolation With UW Solution • A New Concept • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20241224 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2024/12/24/
2) Van der Burg MPM, Guicherit OR, Ploeg RJ, Frölich M, Bruijn JA, Scherft JP, Gooszen HG. Metabolic control after autotransplantation of highly purified canine pancreatic islets isolated in UW-solution. XIII International Congress of The Transplantation Society, San Francisco (USA) August 19–24, 1990.
3) van der Burg MPM, Guicherit OR, Ploeg RJ, Frölich M, Bruijn JA, Scherft JP, Gooszen HG. Metabolic control after autotransplantation of highly purified canine pancreatic islets isolated in UW solution. Transplant Proc. 1991 Feb;23(1 Pt 1):785-6. PMID: 1990691. PDF available below
Citation info : Transplants of UW-Isolated Islets • Transplantation Society 1990 Paper • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250118 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2025/01/18/
Front Page • 20250115_1 • Miracles.Media • Link to full text paper PMID_1465965 🔗
Yesterday, Jan 14th 2025, I posted a video of the slideshow and audio track of my talk on the innovative Percoll-UWS density gradient for the purification of canine and human pancreatic islets, at the 5th Congres European Society for Organ Transplantation, Maastricht (The Netherlands) October 7–10, 1991 (1,2).
That paper was presented the next year , in a poster discussion I co-chaired at the 1st International Congress of the Cell Transplant Society in Pittsburgh (USA) May 31–June 3, 1992 (3,4). The conference proceedings paper of that meeting has been published in Transplantation Proceedings in 1992 (5).
The dutch publisher Elsevier, is publishing Transplantation Proceedings from 1997, and provides (restricted) access to full text online.
Science in print is out of date ?
Previous editions (before 1997) of the journal Transplantation Proceedings , were published by Appleton & Lange, like this 1992 paper (5), and full text is not found online. Also, I am afraid, many libraries have thrown away their stocks of print editions. I, myself, have not kept the bulky Transplantation Proceedings volumes I once bought … thrown away for lack of space , and what I kept is not within reach in practice, piled up in the attic, like the many hundreds of scientific slides…
A pdf copy of that 1992 paper is now available below (5) 😉 And copies will be added in upcoming updates of those previous posts.
Notes
1) Van der Burg MPM, Guicherit OR, Prins FA, Scherft JP, Frölich M, Gooszen HG. Percoll in UW: efficient iso-osmotic canine and human islet purification. 5th Congres European Society for Organ Transplantation, Maastricht (The Netherlands) October 7–10, 1991.
2) Percoll UWS Purification Pancreatic Islets • ESOT 1991 Talk • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250114 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2025/10/14/
3) Van der Burg MPM, Guicherit OR, Scherft JP, Bruijn JA, Frölich M, Gooszen HG. Islet preservation during isolation: a new concept in cell transplantation. First International Congress of the Cell Transplant Society, Pittsburgh (USA) May 31 – June 3, 1992.
5) Van der Burg MPM, Guicherit OR, Frölich M, Bruijn JA, Gooszen HG. Islet preservation during isolation: a new concept in cell transplantation. Transplant Proc. 1992 Dec;24(6):2840-1. PMID: 1465965.
Percoll UWS Purification Pancreatic Islets • ESOT 1991 Talk • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250114 • TakeNode 459d71fd-069f-4f6d-9c8f-924ebf132222
Two years, after we introduced the UW-Solution ( UWS ) as the islet isolation solution at the 4th ESOT meeting (1,2) , this talk on the innovative Percoll-UWS density gradient for the purification of canine and human pancreatic islets, was presented at the 5th ESOT — Wednesday Oct 9 , 1991, at 2 PM at the 5th ESOT meeting in Maastricht, Netherlands (3) .
That 5th ESOT meeting was recorded on tape by Audio Archives Int. I purchased some tapes, including the tape of that afternoon session that had started with my talk — and found that the taping of this session had started a few minutes too late … during my talk, the moment I started presenting the Results.
That original tape is now included in this remastered slideshow of my talk presented in this video (20250114) here , starting at 2 min 51 sec. Audio of the first part of my speech , missing in the original 5th ESOT tape, I have recorded this week (from the handout of the speech, written out at full lenght) and added as a voice over at the start of this remastered slideshow.
Cassette Tapes , Audio Archives Int, 5th ESOT • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250114_2 • TakeNode 97730a39-b3db-4f56-a08a-77c4d0406be0
Background
In November 1989, I had my first chance for a presentation at a major international conference, the 4th ESOT meeting in Barcelona, of a paper centered on the rationale for employing the University of Wisconsin (UW) organ preservation solution in pancreatic islet isolation.
We demonstrated in 1989, that the use of the UW-Solution ( UWS ) for isolation of canine pancreatic islets prior to ‘conventional’ dextran gradient purification, consistently results in a greatly improved purification outcome, of >90% purified islets, and successful transplantation of the canine islets.
Thus , the UWS was used as the isolation solution both before , and after the purification of islets — but not yet during the purification step, during centrifugation of the pancreatic tissue in a density gradient.
A conventional (Hanks’ balanced salts) solution was still being used for preparing density gradients with dextran in our laboratory.
Following our islet transplants series June-August 1989 , next a working visit in Minneapolis Sep-Oct ’89, and presentations at the Nov ’89 ESOT congress in Barcelona , we had started a new series of islet isolation experiments from December 1989.
During the first two isolations, Dec 1989, of this new series, I wondered whether the dextran gradient could be optimized , for example by layering the islet suspension in UWS (the pancreatic digest suspension) on top of the dextran bottom layer, or perhaps layering the digest on top of a bottom layer of dextran dissolved in UWS…
The new , much shorter, Labcraft density hydrometers, I had purchased during the Minneapolis visit Nov. 1989 , would greatly facilitate designing new density gradients.
The same lot of dextran (Sigma’s industrial-grade dextran) had been used for all these studies. That stock ran out, so a switch was made Jan 2, 1990 to using a new batch of that dextran powder, resulting however in a significantly impaired recovery of islets during purification (4).
Thus, designing a new density gradient became urgent January 1990.
Dextran-UWS Gradient • First density gradient in UW-Solution
March 1990 , new density gradient research was started during islet isolation , splitting the suspension of digested pancreatic tissue (‘digest’) for comparison of different density gradients, of either Sigma’s dextran, and Pharmacia’s essentially pure dextran T70 product in Hanks’ solution … and also the first ‘UW gradient’ tested : a dextran gradient in UW-Solution (4).
Percoll-UWS • Successful density gradient in UW-Solution
From April 1990, dextran T70 was used also in dextran-UW gradients, and islet purification research was further extended that month, by designing a density gradient of Percoll in UW Solution, and from May 1990, designing a Pentastarch-UW gradient. Posters on these new density gradients in UWS were presented June 1991 at the 3rd IPITA Congress in Lyon, France (4,5,6).
The paper presented in this 5th ESOT talk, was presented the next year (1992) again in full detail in a poster at the 1st meeting of the Cell Transplant Society in Pittsburgh , and a remastered edition was posted online recently (7).
Proceedings paper below (8).
Slides originally created on a Macintosh computer October 1991, using the MacDraw II application, with graphs from Cricket Graph. Those 1991 files were remastered this month using LibreOffice, as well as the likewise produced Pittsburgh poster for this video of the 5th ESOT talk. Handout speech and report files originally created in the Mac Desk Accessory ‘Acta’, currently accessed by Opal.
Notes
1) Pancreatic Islet Isolation With UW Solution • A New Concept • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20241224 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2024/12/24/
2) Pancreatic Islet Isolation in UW Solution & Transplantation • ESOT 1989 Talk • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20241229 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2024/12/29/
3) Van der Burg MPM, Guicherit OR, Prins FA, Scherft JP, Frölich M, Gooszen HG. Percoll in UW: efficient iso-osmotic canine and human islet purification. 5th Congres European Society for Organ Transplantation, Maastricht (The Netherlands) October 7–10, 1991.
4) Dextran UWS Pancreatic Islet Purification • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250104 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2025/01/04/
5) Percoll UWS Pancreatic Islet Purification • 20240731 • Michel van der Burg • michelvanderburg•com
6) PentaStarch UWS Pancreatic Islet Purification • 20240802 • Michel van der Burg • michelvanderburg•com
7) Pittsburgh 1992 Cell Transplant Society • 20240812 • Michel van der Burg • michelvanderburg•com
8) Van der Burg MPM, Guicherit OR, Frölich M, Bruijn JA, Gooszen HG. Islet preservation during isolation: a new concept in cell transplantation. Transplant Proc. 1992 Dec;24(6):2840-1. PMID: 1465965. PDF available below PMID_1465965 🔗
End Card
5th Congres European Society for Organ Transplantation, Maastricht (The Netherlands) October 9, 1991 14:00
0:07 Photo taken at 4th ESOT in Barcelona, 1989 (two years earlier)
0:06-2:51 Voice Over Michel van der Burg • Recorded Jan 11th, 2025 • Substitute for audio missing in original tape recording
2:51 Start Original Audio Tape 5th ESOT session by Audio Archives Int
6:52 Start Discussion • Chair : Reinout van Schilfgaarde (Groningen, Netherlands) • With contributions by Bernhard Hering (Giessen, Germany), R. Seelis (Edmonton, Canada), Derek Gray (Oxford, UK), and Reinout van Schilfgaarde (Groningen, Netherlands).
Citation info : Percoll UWS Purification Pancreatic Islets • ESOT 1991 Talk • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250114 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2025/01/14/
DRI Dream Team • Miami 1998 • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • 20250105_1 • TakeNode e6258505-55a8-4365-bb70-7a1dcd7b5426
Team up with researchers at the Diabetes Research Institute in Miami , working on human islet transplantation (1).
“For National Geographic…” announced Camillo Ricordi for fun, that Monday , April 27th in 1998 at the Diabetes Research Institute, when the DRI islet isolation team posed in GMP outfit for this picture (2) — with Elina Linetsky on the left , and me standing second from right — taken after finishing our human islet isolation work, including islet purification in the iodixanol gradient in UW-Solution (3).
Notes
1) Working visit April – May 1998 at the “fast track” center of the Diabetes Research Institute (Scientific director Prof. C. Ricordi, MD) of the University of Miami (Miami, FL, USA)
2) Blown up image (from small GIF online in the early DRInet days), taken through a reflecting window.
3) Human Islet Purification Miami 1998 • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • 20181102 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2018/11/02/
Citation info : DRI Dream Team • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250105 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2025/01/05/
Dextran Poster 3rd IPITA 1991 • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • 20250104_1 • TakeNode 1c05b2a5-de41-4185-b304-fee2335100f3
Poster (remastered edition, 2025) presented at the 3rd IPITA Congress, June 1991, in Lyon, France (1). One of three posters presented at this congress on purification during the isolation of pancreatic islets (1,2,3,4).
Background
Purification during the isolation of pancreatic islets was greatly improved in 1989 by replacing the conventional islet isolation solutions with the UW organ preservation solution.
The UW-Solution was used as the isolation solution both before , and after the purification of islets — but not yet during the purification step, during centrifugation of the pancreatic tissue in a density gradient.
A conventional (Hanks’ balanced salts) solution was used for preparing density gradients with dextran, the Minneapolis method introduced in 1988 in our laboratory (5).
We had demonstrated previously, that the use of the UW organ preservation solution for isolation of canine pancreatic islets prior to dextran gradient purification, consistently results in >90% purified islets. Further 4 out of 5 islet transplants purified using this gradient had been successful.
Following our islet transplants series June-August 1989 , next a working visit in Minneapolis Sep-Oct ’89, and presentations at the Nov ’89 ESOT congress in Barcelona , we had started a new series of islet isolation experiments from December 1989.
During the first two isolations, Dec 1989, of this new series, I wondered whether the dextran gradient could be optimized , for example by layering the islet suspension in UW-Solution (the pancreatic digest suspension) on top of the dextran bottom layer, or perhaps layering the digest on top of a bottom layer of dextran dissolved in UW-Solution…
The new , much shorter, Labcraft density hydrometers, I had purchased during the Minneapolis visit Nov. 1989 , would greatly facilitate designing new density gradients.
The same lot of dextran (Sigma’s industrial-grade dextran) had been used for all these studies. That stock ran out, so a switch was made Jan 2, 1990 to using a new batch of that dextran powder, resulting however in a significantly impaired recovery of islets during purification , as shown in the poster shown here.
Thus, designing a new density gradient became urgent January 1990.
Dextran UW Gradient • First density gradient in UW-Solution
March 6, 1990 , new density gradient research was started during islet isolation , splitting the suspension of digested pancreatic tissue (‘digest’) for comparison of either dextran of Ficoll (a similar product) in Hanks’ solution , and also a dextran gradient in UW-Solution – the first ‘UW gradient’…
Later that month, purification research was started with a different, essentially pure, dextran product : ‘dextran T70′ from Pharmacia, in Hanks’ solution — with results reported in the poster here.
From April 1990, dextran T70 was used also in dextran-UW gradients, and islet purification research was further extended that month, by designing a density gradient of Percoll in UW Solution (3), and from May 1990, designing a Pentastarch-UW gradient (4).
Notes
1) Van der Burg MPM, Guicherit OR, Scherft JP, Frölich M, Gooszen HG. Sigma’s industrial grade dextran is not suitable for islet isolation. 3rd International Congress on Pancreatic and Islet Transplantation, Symposium on Artificial Insulin Delivery System, Lyon (France) June 6–8, 1991.
2) Dextran UWS Pancreatic Islet Purification • 20250104 • Michel van der Burg • michelvanderburg•com
3) Percoll UWS Pancreatic Islet Purification • 20240731 • Michel van der Burg • michelvanderburg•com
4) PentaStarch UWS Pancreatic Islet Purification • 20240802 • Michel van der Burg • michelvanderburg•com
5) Pancreas & Islet Transplantation Program • 20240912 • Michel van der Burg • michelvanderburg•com
Citation info : Dextran UWS Pancreatic Islet Purification • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250104 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2025/01/04/
4th ESOT Slide #19 • Pancreatic Islets UWS Series 1989 • Kodak PhotoCD • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • 20250103_1 • TakeNode eeb55729-c02b-4f73-ab0e-9f71b65bf85e
Slide #19 of talk by Michel van der Burg at the 4th ESOT congress in Barcelona (Spain) Nov 1989 on the paper ‘Pancreatic Islet Isolation With UW Solution • A New Concept’ (1,2). Details of this talk were posted recently (2) with a scan of a paper print of slide #19 – slighly cropped with printing. Here the full image of the original slide, scanned by Kodak PhotoCD in 1994, with minor color correction added (20250103_1) in this post.
This ‘Slide #19’ shows the final dithizone stained sample of the UW-isolated islets after dextran density gradient purification — a micrograph made April 18, 1989 , the second islet isolation experiment performed using the UW-Solution as the isolation solution.
In the lab journal of the first isolation experiment with UW-Solution, Wednesday April 12th 1989, I noted on the final purified islet preparation : ‘handpicking for encapsulation was not necessary: preparation more than 90% pure ( translated from dutch : “handpicken voor inkapseling was niet nodig: preparaat meer dan 90% zuiver”)’.
‘Handpicking’ of islets had been done at the start of our islet lab in 1985-1987 for counting rodent islets in cell culture dishes, and monitoring islet insulin secretion in tubes (3). Soon, ‘handpicking’ was no longer needed , when monitoring the insulin secretion of isolated islets in perifusion chambers (4,5). However, the handpicking method was used again in a pilot study on encapsulation of islets in 1989 by medical student Joost Clemens (6). Joost had just started on this research project, and was assisting me with islet ‘counting’ (yield and purity assessment) in the ‘duplo’ samples from this first series of UWS isolations.
Handpicking Pancreatic Islets • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • 20250103_2 • TakeNode 7988ce39-6777-4db3-82c5-8191acdb13d6
Macro photography (Photo paper print, September 1987, AVC, Leiden University) of the aspiration of isolated canine pancreatic islets, in a suspension still contaminated with exocrine pancreatic fragments, at the tip of a hand blown glass handpicking pipette (custom made at the Leiden University) collected and transferred into tubes for monitoring insulin secretion the first year of pilot work in the Leiden islet laboratory (4).
2) Pancreatic Islet Isolation in UW Solution & Transplantation • ESOT 1989 Talk • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20241229 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2024/12/29/
3) Lucky #1 Islet • 20240811 • Michel van der Burg • michelvanderburg•com
4) Cradle of Islet Transplants • 20240829 • Michel van der Burg • michelvanderburg•com
5) Monitoring pancreatic islets in perifusion • 20240911 | Michel van der Burg | michelvanderburg•com
6) Joost A.M. Clemens (MSc student in Medicine) at the Department of Biomaterials (Prof. dr K. de Groot) and Department of Surgery of the Leiden University (Michel van der Burg , Hein Gooszen). Pilot study of the encapsulation of dog islets using the alginate polylysine and poly-HEMA-phospate method (1989). At that time , both the Biomaterials department and the Islet Lab of the Surgery department were housed in the building of the Cell Biology department of the Leiden University Hospital (AZL, now LUMC). Below a portrait snapshot I took of Klaas de Groot at a Garden party organized in 1989 by the Department of Cell Biology, Leiden University.
Klaas de Groot, Biomaterials Department of the Leiden University in 1989. Photo by Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • 20250103_3 • TakeNode c25a87b7-09a4-49ce-8c42-14142da1e066
Citation info : Pancreatic Islets UWS Series 1989 • Kodak PhotoCD • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20250103 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2025/01/03/
Oral Presentation Slide 19 ~ Pure Islets Isolated in UW Solution • Miracles.Media • 20241229_1 • TakeNode ce420e5a-1df7-4e4f-bcb6-6831434ffac7
In November 1989, I had my first chance for a presentation at a major international conference, the 4th ESOT meeting in Barcelona, of a paper centered on the rationale for employing the University of Wisconsin (UW) organ preservation solution in pancreatic islet isolation.
Venue 4th Congress of the European Society for Organ Transplantation, Barcelona (Spain) November 1–4, 1989 • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • 20241224 • TakeNode 103c4c3c-5d36-4111-a5f8-f60e81c5db4d
This innovative islet isolation work with the UW-Solution had been accepted as a poster presentation for the 4th ESOT meeting (1). I also took the opportunity to present this new work during a talk on previous isolation work (2,3) at this conference.
Barcelona Nov 1989 4th ESOT • Talk by Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • 20241229_2 • Photo : Grup Jaume Muntaner (Barcelona) • TakeNode 96957e2f-1462-48e1-aca1-4745198d9a54
‘Behind the scenes’ I had first remade my lost poster at the congress venue (1), and then I rewrote my speech in the hotel room on the older research (2) updated with the more recent work with the UW-Solution, and including the outcome of our first islet transplantations.
Barcelona 89 • Handout 4th ESOT Talk
Below a scan of that handout of the final speech, written out at full lenght in a notepad from a recent working visit in Minneapolis (4).
Barcelona 89 • Handout 4th ESOT Talk • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • 20241229_3 • TakeNode f8595a82-fba5-4a89-a01f-4c37976d06d7 • PDF FILE 20241229_3 copy is available here
( finishing speech first part on our previous islet isolation methods using the conventional RPMI solution – a solution originally designed for tissue culture, not for cold storage of organs )
Slide 18
Image Slide 18 (scan of print) • Best (Not Usual) Purity Islets RPMI Series • Miracles.Media • 20241229_4 • TakeNode a6afbf29-b3e6-41d0-abd0-07471303be15
This slide shows one of the purest preparations obtained, with an estimated purity of 65% islets. • On the average however a purity of only 30% was obtained.
Recently we adopted an entirely new approach to islet isolation. • Since UW, the new organ cold storage solution has been shown to allow long-term cold storage of the canine pancreas; • and, since islet isolation too is largely performed in the cold; • we tested this preservation solution as the isolation medium, throughout the isolation procedure in another 6 dogs; • as compared to the commonly used solutions like RPMI tissue culture medium.
Slide 19
Image Slide 19 (scan of print) – Usual Purity Islets UWS Series • Miracles.Media • 20241229_5 • TakeNode dacd3b99-5958-44fe-85ed-6abd55db2676
This slide shows the final dithizone stained preparation after dextran purification of UW-isolated islets. • UW did not affect islet yield • however, UW markedly improved purity : • acinar tissue is virtually absent.
2) Van der Burg MPM, Gooszen HG, Field MJ, Scherft JP, Terpstra JL, Van de Woude FT, Guicherit OR, Frölich M, Bruijn JA. Comparison of current islet isolation techniques in dogs. 4th Congress of the European Society for Organ Transplantation, Barcelona (Spain) November 1–4, 1989. Oral presentation. (1)
3) Van der Burg MPM, Gooszen HG, Field MJ, Scherft JP, Terpstra JL, van de Woude FJ, Guicherit OR, Frölich M, Bruijn JA. Comparison of current islet isolation techniques in dogs. Transplant Proc. 1990 Aug;22(4):2044-5. PMID: 1697121. This paper appears to be not readily available online – a reprint copy is available at this site (1)
4) Working visit Sep – Oct 1989, joining the pancreatic islet isolation team of the pioneer transplant surgeon David Sutherland at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
Citation info : Pancreatic Islet Isolation in UW Solution & Transplantation • ESOT 1989 Talk • Michel van der Burg • Miracles.Media • @1MEMO 20241229 • URL michelvanderburg.com/2024/12/29/
