LIDOPACO | DZD - Deutsches Zentrum für Diabetesforschung

Islet Spatial Transcriptomics: Microscopic image of cell structures with areas highlighted in green, pink, and yellow on a dark background.

The Living Donor Pancreas Cohort (LIDOPACO) is a pioneering human biobank of the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD e.V.) established at the Paul Langerhans Institute Dresden (PLID) and the Institute for Diabetes research and Metabolic disease (IDM) of Helmholtz Munich (link), and at the German Diabetes Center, Leibniz Center for Diabetes Research (DDZ) in collaboration with the Departments for Visceral Surgery and Pathology at affiliated hospitals in Dresden, Tübingen and Düsseldorf, respectively. The aim of this study is to provide provide material for preclinical studies and clinical trials that gain insight into the natural history of islet during the progression from normoglycemia to diabetes. In this context, LIDOPACO systematically collects and analyzes human pancreatic tissue and corresponding blood samples from metabolically phenotyped patients undergoing pancreatic surgery for various pancreatic diseases (pre-/post-surgery at 3 and 12 months). The LIDOPACO pancreas and blood biobank is therefore a unique resource worldwide, offering deep insights into pancreatic islet biology, particularly in the context of prediabetes and type 2 diabetes (T2D).

LIDOPACO enables the study of pancreatic islets in situ, thereby retaining their molecular and physiological characteristics without introducing potential artifacts that might otherwise result from enzymatic isolation and culture. The possibility to integrate medical history and a large set of pre- and post-operative clinical laboratory data of the donors with specific information on their metabolic state and in depth-multiomics profiling of their islets in situ is a cornerstone of the LIDOPACO’s ambition to most accurately define, through a cross-sectional approach, the progression of beta cell failure from health to prediabetes and T2D.

1263

Total number of living donors
Last updated: June 29, 2026

Read an article about LIDOPACO in the DZG magazine (article in German)

Metabolic Phenotyping

Patients are thoroughly metabolically phenotyped pre-operatively through several analyses, including in most instances, the performance of an oral glucose tolerance test (oGTT). This allows their accurate stratification into subjects with normoglycemia, impaired fasting or glucose tolerance (i.e. prediabetes), or diabetes. The latter can be further classified as type 1, type 2 or type 3 diabetes (also known as pancreoprivic diabetes which is diabetes caused by diseases of the pancreas including pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer) based on the occurrence of anti-islet autoantibodies and the medical history of the patient. A fraction of the donors undergo similar metabolic studies following surgery.

Sample Collection

Blood samples are collected pre-, and sometimes post-operatively, while pancreatic specimens are obtained by pathologists immediately after surgery. This approach allows for the collection of fresh, high-quality samples alongside comprehensive clinical and metabolic data. Anesthesiology annotations of glucose administration and glycemia during the operation and in the minutes prior to tissue explantation may further help to define the physiological status of the retrieved islets.

Applications

LIDOPACO enables advanced investigations, such as in situ "omics" analyses (transcriptomics, proteomics, lipidomics, metabolomics, etc.) as well as static and dynamic imaging and physiology of living islet cells in pancreatic tissue slices, thereby capturing in a novel fashion multiple aspects of islet biology in health and disease.

A chart showing average parameters by diabetes status, represented by circles of varying sizes for age, BMI, 120-minute oGTT, HbA1c, fasting glucose, fasting insulin, and fasting C-peptide.

LIDOPACO is a groundbreaking undertaking to elucidate the physiology of islet cells in situ and the pathophysiology of diabetes. Specifically, it provides insight into the structural and functional alterations associated with beta cell demise in T2D, such as islet inflammation, and thus the identification of molecular signatures of its progression and heterogeneity.