isolation and characterization of islet stellate cells in rat the central role of pscs in pancreatic fibrogenesis is well established however the mechanism responsible for the islet fibrosis presenting in the late stage of t2dm has not been fully elucidated this study was designed to determine whether the endocrine pancreatic islets contain cells resembling pscs pscs were isolated from pancreas using standard explants techniques a similar method was used to acquire iscs adherent iscs with a stellate angular morphology migrated from the edge of cultured islets within 48 h of primary culture iscs contained fewer lipid droplets than equivalent pscs and their rapid disappearance accompanied by the increased expression of sma suggested that iscs were more rapidly activated than pscs in vitro they expressed sma vimentin gfap and were positive for ecm components coli coliii and fn all of which are characteristics of classical pscs however iscs differed from pscs by having reduced rates of proliferation and migration in vitro our in vitro study shows that isolated islets contain a population of stellate cells which are phenotypically similar but not identical to pscs in view of the established role of pscs in pancreatic fibrosis we suggest that these may contribute to islet fibrosis in t2dm