Mission Statement
The Islet Cell Resource Centers (ICRs), were funded by the National Center for Research Resources and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, components of the National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services from September, 2001 through July, 2009, and comprised an interactive group of 10 academic laboratories charged with three major goals: 1) to provide pancreatic islets of cGMP-quality to eligible investigators for use in FDA-approved, IRB-approved transplantation protocols; 2) to optimize the harvest, purification, function, storage, and shipment of islets while developing tests that characterized the quality and predicted the effectiveness of islets transplanted into patients with diabetes mellitus; and 3) to provide pancreatic islets for basic science studies.