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Article History

Received: 5 July 2025

Accepted: 13 February 2026

First Online: 17 April 2026

Acknowledgements

: We would like to acknowledge D. Barayan and C. Knuth (Sunnybrook Research Institute) for helpful comments; L. Fiddes at the University of Toronto Microscopy Imaging Lab and A. Darbandi at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, for EM sample processing and imaging; J. Cathcart at the University Health Network, Division of Biophysics and Bioimaging, for imaging of stained pancreatic sections; and P. Stefanova (Sunnybrook Research Institute) for histological sample preparation. Human islets for research were provided by the Integrated Islet Distribution Program (City of Hope) and the Alberta Diabetes Institute (ADI) IsletCore at the University of Alberta in Edmonton ( ) with the assistance of the Human Organ Procurement and Exchange (HOPE) Program, Trillium Gift of Life Network (TGLN) and other Canadian organ procurement organisations. Islet isolation from the ADI IsletCore was approved by the Human Research Ethics Board at the University of Alberta (Pro00013094). All donors’ families gave informed consent for the use of pancreatic tissue in research. Some of the data in the manuscript have been presented at scientific meetings.

: All data supporting the findings of this study are available within the paper and its Supplementary Information.

: The project was supported by Canadian Institutes of Health Research Project Grant 142352 and Diabetes Canada End Diabetes:100 Award OG-3-21-5584-RS to RAS.

: The authors declare that there are no relationships or activities that might bias, or be perceived to bias, their work.

: LW, CI, QY, ZC ACHN, CR, MP and SPY performed experiments. All authors reviewed the article and approved the final version. RAS designed the project and wrote the manuscript. RAS is the guarantor of this work and, as such, had full access to all the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.