Anodic aluminium oxide membranes for immunoisolation with sufficient oxygen supply for pancreatic islets

Abstract

Immunoisolation membranes have been developed for various cell encapsulations for therapeutic purposes. However effective encapsulation systems have been hindered by low oxygen (O₂) permeability or imperfect immunoisolation caused by either low porosity or non-uniform pore geometry. Here, we report an encapsulation method that uses an anodic aluminum oxide membrane formed by polyethylene oxide self-assembly to obtain nanochannels with both high selectivity in excluding immune molecules and high permeability of nutrients such as glucose, insulin, and O₂. The extracorporeal encapsulation system composed of these membranes allows O₂ flux to meet the O₂ demand of pancreatic islets of Langerhans and provides excellent in vitro viability and functionality of islets.