Rebecca Spiers

I am a member of the clinical islet isolation team; isolating human islets for transplantation into patients with type 1 diabetes. 

I take responsibility within the group for improving and maintaining the teams integral electronic databases.  Funded by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) I also facilitate the distribution of islets for research purposes, to various groups within Oxford University, and other centres around the U.K who participate in diabetic research. I am currently developing an algorithm, which aims to allocate research islets to these external centres based on their pre-requested characteristics for islets, thus allowing research islets to be effectively utilised. 

I support the groups own research, aimed at improving the islet isolation yield, by studying how specific enzymes digest the islet-exocrine interface in order to release islets, particularly with respect to donor characteristics such as age and BMI.