ITN press conference to discuss preliminary findings of multicenter islet transplant trial

The press conference will be held in the Coolidge Room at the Marriot Wardman Park Washington DC Hotel 2660 Woodley Road, NW, Washington, DC 20008.

The ITN multi-center trial is an international effort designed to replicate the success of the ground-breaking Edmonton Protocol for islet transplantation and to define the challenges of applying a single common technique across multiple clinical sites. A preliminary analysis of the results has now been completed at the approximate half-way point in the 9 center, 36 patient trial.

Conference attendees include: Dr. James Shapiro, Principal Investigator of the ITN trial and Director of the University of Alberta Clinical Islet Transplant Program; Dr. Jeffrey A. Bluestone, Director of the Immune Tolerance Network; Dr. Jonathan Lakey, Principal Investigator of Islet Isolation in the ITN trial and Director of the University of Alberta Human Islet Isolation Laboratory; Dr. Camillo Ricordi, co-investigator of the ITN trial and Scientific Director of the Diabetes Research Institute at University of Miami; Dr. Bernhard Hering, co-investigator of the ITN trial and Associate Director of Diabetes Institute for Immunology and Transplantation at the University of Minnesota; and several patients who have received islet transplants as part of the trial.

The press conference is being held in conjunction with the American Transplant Congress, the joint scientific meeting of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS) and the American Transplant Society (AST) scheduled for May 30 � June 4, 2003 at the Marriot Wardman Park.

For more information, contact Jeffrey B. Matthews, Ph.D., ITN Director of Communications, (604) 253-4990 or [email protected].