nPOD Data Portal Useful Resources

Welcome to the nPOD Data Portal Useful Resources page! From here, you can access the latest information on current and new technologies, nPOD research webinars, video tutorials, shared protocols and much more. This compilation will help you navigate our Data Portal and accelerate your diabetes research. We intend to update this tab regularly, so please check in here often. Happy Learning!

nPOD Operational Model

Since its establishment in 2007, the Network for Pancreatic Organ donors with Diabetes (nPOD) has become the world’s largest biobank of human pancreas and other type 1 diabetes (T1D) related tissues. nPOD partners with all 58 organ procurement organizations (OPOs) across the United States (U.S.) to obtain high-quality tissues from persons with and at-risk for T1D. With this, nPOD has established a nationwide screening program wherein OPO-affiliated screening labs perform serological tests for islet autoantibodies (AAb) to identify rare non-diabetic AAb positive persons who carry high risk for T1D as well as new-onset T1D cases presenting with diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA). This represents an invaluable resource for studying the immunological and metabolic events in the pancreas and its draining lymph nodes leading up to and exactly at the time of symptomatic onset. The nPOD Coordinating Center operates 24/7/365 days per year. Applications are reviewed by the Tissue Prioritization Committee (TPC), and samples are provided free of charge to approved investigators around the world to support research falling into one of seven categories (beta cell physiology and disfunction; beta bell development, differentiation and regeneration; immunology, novel biomarkers; novel technologies; pathology; type 1diabetes etiology and environment).

Organ Processing at nPOD

All organs are processed by the Organ Processing and Pathology Core (OPPC) according to established Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). Like the nPOD Coordinating Center, our OPPC staff is on call 24/7/365 days per year.

Pancreas

Every pancreas is subjected to systematic anatomic dissection as shown in the diagram below. Our pancreas processing SOPs have evolved over time to accommodate new assays and technologies. For example, we now routinely generate live pancreas slices in addition to generating formalin fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) and optimal cutting temperature medium embedded (OCT) blocks as well as vials of snap frozen tissue for RNA/DNA and protein extraction. We are actively working on establishing the islet isolation protocol in our lab with the goal of distributing isolated pancreatic islets from the pancreas of donors without diabetes, positive for autoantibodies without diabetes and those with Type 1 diabetes. For detailed organ processing SOPs click here.

Pancreatic Tissue Slices

Are you interested in seeing how we generate fresh tissue slices for functional studies? No problem! You can watch the video we recorded for you.

You can also learn more about pancreatic tissue slices from these two ground-breaking publications:

🌐 Pancreas tissue slices from organ donors enable in situ analysis of type 1 diabetes pathogenesis.

🌐 Long-term culture of human pancreatic slices as a model to study real-time islet regeneration

❓ Did you know that you can generate tissue slices from mouse pancreas and use them in a variety of different studies? This highly informative video created by the laboratory of nPOD investigator Dr. Edward Phelps will show you how.

🌐 Observing islet function and islet-immune cell interactions in live pancreatic tissue slices

Spleen, Pancreatic Lymph Nodes, Duodenum

As done with pancreas, tissue from these organs are processed in FFPE and OCT tissue blocks and vials with snap-frozen tissue. In addition, we isolate and cryopreserve total immune cell populations from spleen and PLNs.

Prepared by University of Florida, nPOD | Version 1 | August 2022