Subaqueous acoustic pressure system based one day heterotypic pseudo-islet spheroid formation with adipose derived stem cells for graft survival-related function enhancement

To overcome Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM), which can cause hyperglycemia due to diminished insulin secretion of β-cell function, islet transplantation has been developed with various strategies including pseudo-islet. However, conventional pseudo-islet formation techniques combining with other cells depend on natural cellular aggregation, which requires at least 5 days to form and even show segregation of distinct cell types, leading to diminished cell viability and function. Herein, we applied a subaqueous free-standing 3D cell culture (FS) device, which can reduce the spheroid formation time by trapped cell in nodes of acoustic standing wave. Briefly, Culturing with adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) to form heterotypic pseudo-islet (Hislet) in FS device dramatically reduced formation time less than one day. Hislet demonstrated enhancement of cell viability than conventional pseudo-islet formation method. Additionally, ADSCs combined Hislet proved strong secretion of various paracrine factors. Also results showed significantly increased angiogenesis effect and immunomodulation effect for various type of immune cells in Hislet compared to islet, which can enhance transplantation survival. Furthermore, Hislet validated glucose-regulating capacity and enhanced angiogenesis effect in vivo T1DM model. Throughout this study, we propose a novel strategy for forming Hislet that can overcome the limitations of conventional Islet and pseudo-islet for T1DM.