ABSTRACT
The incidence of diabetes mellitus tends to increase, and clinical treatment is extremely challenging. Although drugs exert certain therapeutic effect on reducing blood glucose level, it remains impossible to achieve clinical cure of type 1 diabetes mellitus with a risk of blood glucose fluctuations. Islet cell transplantation is one of the efficacious methods to solve the problem of blood glucose fluctuation caused by insulin injection. However, there are several problems in the clinical practice of islet cell transplantation, including long time use of immunosuppressants in recipients and massive loss of pancreatic islet cells after transplantation, which limit its wide application in clinical practice. Islet cell encapsulation technology can reduce the loss of islet cells and decrease or eliminate the rejection, which is a key link to improve the survival of islet cells. In this article, the development course of islet cell encapsulation technology was briefly reviewed, the challenges in different islet cell encapsulation technologies were analyzed and subsequent research on this technology was projected, aiming to provide reference for promoting the development of islet cell.