FIG. 2.

A small number of donor islets was needed to reverse diabetes in chimeric late-stage diabetic NOD mice. Late-stage diabetic NOD mice were injected with BM and CD4⁺ T-depleted spleen cells from FVB/N donors to induce chimerism after conditioning with anti-CD3 and anti-CD8. The next day after HCT, titrated numbers (600–25) of islets from FVB/N donors were transplanted into the pancreas or liver of the chimeric recipients (A–F). The recipients were checked weekly for blood glucose for 120 days after islet transplantation. For recipients with 25 donor islets, exogenous insulin was used soon after transplantation to ensure the survival of the recipients. If a recipient's blood glucose was >500 mg/dl, the mouse was injected with insulin (1 unit daily) for the subsequent 5 days, and injections were stopped 2 days before blood glucose measuring. There were 6–10 recipients in each group.