The widespread prevalence of diabetes around the world necessitates relentless efforts to understand islet cell biology and its impact on maintaining the internal homeostatic milieu. Having a thorough understanding of the complex pathways involved in regulating the blood glucose is critical to furthering efforts towards achieving a cure for diabetes. Utilizing isolated human islets for the study of glucose sensing to insulin release continues to reveal new information for the design of new diabetes therapy and treatment methods. Efforts are underway in the realms of human allogeneic and autogenic islet isolation and transplantations to replace the lost innate functional islet mass as a means of achieving insulin-independent lifestyles. Regeneration studies are redefining the life cycle of an islet to open up ways to develop islets from progenitor cells or stem cells to potentially expand the total islet mass for type II diabetics or replace the lost beta cell mass in type I diabetics. Improving islet cell survival after regeneration or transplantation by means of immunotherapeutic modification ensures their continued survival of islets in the recipient.

As an effort to further this cause we invite investigators in the field of islet cell biology, regeneration, and transplantation studies to submit original research articles as well as review articles that can help broaden our scope of understanding the interplay of myriad factors in the pathophysiology of diabetes and suggest appropriate remedial actions thereof. We are interested in preclinical, clinical, translational, or basic research into human or animal islet cell biology and transplantation. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Islet cell biology and physiology: in vitro or in vivo under normal and pathological conditions of diabetes
• Islet and peri-insular cell signaling mechanisms
• Islet regeneration from pancreatic progenitor cells or nonpancreatic stem cells
• Clinical islet auto- or allotransplantation
• Xenotransplantation models of islet engraftment and immunotolerance
• Islet transplant immunology
• Impact of immunosuppression on beta cell mass and its function
• Islet quality and functional status monitoring

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ije/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable: