A simple, reliable method for high-throughput screening for diabetes drugs using 3D β-cell spheroids.

Early screens for new diabetes drugs rely on monolayers of β-cells, which are known to be poor predictors of the in vivo response. Previously, we developed a method to create uniform islet spheroids from freshly-dispersed human donor tissue for drug screening. While the human engineered islets worked well to reduce donor-to-donor variability, it is difficult and expensive to obtain sufficient high-quality human islets for drug testing.