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The islets of Langerhans are clusters of endocrine cells located within the pancreas. Insulin-producing beta cells are the major cell type within islets, with glucagon-producing alpha cells and somatostatin-producing delta cells the other major cell types. The beta cells are the target of immune-mediated destruction in type 1 diabetes (Graham et al., 2012). Failure of beta cell function accompanied by loss of beta cell mass is also a feature of type 2 diabetes (Wali et al., 2013). Therefore studying the biology of pancreatic islets is important to understand the pathogenesis of diabetes and to develop new therapies. Here we describe the isolation of mouse islets. This requires gentle enzymatic and mechanical digestion of the exocrine tissue and density gradient separation (Chong et al., 2004; Liu and Shapiro, 1995; Thomas et al., 1998). We then describe how islets can be cultured whole or dispersed into single cells for use in a variety of in vitro and in vivo analyses. Using this protocol reliably results in the isolation of 200-400 islets, depending on the strain of mouse.