| 초록 |
Transplantation of pancreatic islet is known for treatment for type 1 diabetes. But, most transplanted islet grafts are lost because of early graft hypoxia that generates cytotoxic reactive oxygen species(ROS) and nitric oxide(NO). Especially, revascularization after hypoxia generates lots of ROS. Metallothionein (MT) is known as antioxidant and antiapoptotic protein, which is rarely epxressed in islets. In this study, MT protein was delivered into islets for improving islet transplantation. To this end, MT protein was fused with protein transduction domain (PTD) Tat peptide. We confirmed that Tat-conjugated MT, i.e., TMT, was existed in islets by fluorescence-labeled TMT. When treating islet with 10 μM of TMT, the viability of islet in hypoxia was almost same as non-treated islet in normoxia. According to these results, it demonstrated that TMT uptake can improve survival of transplanted islets. |
