We created canine models of type 1 diabetes that were suitable for the assessment of cell therapies, such as islet transplantation and bioartificial pancreas, with low-dose streptozotocin (STZ) injection and partial pancreatectomy. In our model, a 50% pancreatectomy was performed with general anesthesia, followed by systemic injection of 35 mg/kg STZ into a vein of the foreleg. Four weeks after the administration of STZ, the fasting blood glucose level of our model dogs was found to be over 200 mg/dl twice on different days, and we could not detect any canine insulin by the intravenous glucose tolerance test (IVGTT). We therefore diagnosed the dogs to have induced diabetes. Some studies have reported high-dose STZ to be very toxic for both the kidney and liver, and therefore a lower dose is desirable to induce diabetic models without any associated kidney or liver damage. We think that the combination of a partial pancreatectomy can thus make it possible to reduce the dose of STZ, and it is therefore useful for the creation of type 1 diabetes models. We believe that our model is a safe and reliable model for type 1 diabetes in canines to assess the efficacy of pancreas-targeted cell therapies.
Keywords: Diabetes; Dogs; Pancreatectomy; Streptozotocin (STZ).