IIAM Researchers

“These little lungs, heart and spleen were beautiful and well formed. In this particular case, we were able to test new methods of preservation to increase the value of the tissues for imaging by immunofluorescence microscopy and mass spectroscopy. The multiple tissue donation allows us, for example, to look at location of cells of the immature immune system, comparing lung, heart and spleen at this young age. Heart muscle will be provided to a cardiologist studying maturity of the mitochondria, the powerhouses of heart cells. — The generosity of the family is greatly appreciated. It is through donations like this that we learn so quickly when we least expect it. Recently our work with neonatal lung donations contributed to research describing the difference between receptors for the COVID virus in newborn lung as compared to older children and adult lung. I will see to it that these little angel’s donation helps in such a way to make our world a better place. Please give my sincere thank you to the Family, to the OPO Coordinators, the recovery team and to IIAM staff for doing the very hard work of making this donation possible and so successful.”

“The research donations create the ability for researchers to make positive change in the medical community and society. There simply is no substitute.”

“Donation of organs for research is a precious resource allowing understanding of human-specific scientific information that can advance the development of efficacious and safe of medicine. The information cannot be obtained with animal models due to species difference.”

“Transplant can save up to eight lives; however, research can potentially save millions.”

“Excellent service and response time! Thank you so much! When we become short on donor lungs, we can depend upon IIAM to supply our needs. Your team does a great service!”

“New medicines have been developed and/or continue to be improved to treat devastating liver diseases, such as hepatitis, allowing patients to return to healthy and productive lives.”

“Through the generous donation of human reproductive organs, important advances, which otherwise would not have been possible, have been made in further improving ovaries and testes cryobanking. The success of the latter can significantly change the lives of the over 150,000 young cancer patients annually and 1,000,000 pre-pubertal and young adult cancer survivors under the age of 40 in the U.S.”

“Proud to be a partner and to I have seen the growth and maturation of the organ research industry with IIAM leading the way.”

“Researchers have taken steps to identify therapeutic targets to prevent disease progression in sporadic aortic aneurysm and dissection — a destructive and inflammatory condition in numerous diseases such as autoimmune diseases, alcoholic liver injury, and vascular inflammation and degeneration.”

“Researchers established a 3D infection model based on donated human lungs to more effectively create therapeutic options to treat patients with pneumonia, the third most common cause of death, especially for the elderly and children under five years old.”

“Thanks to the generous donations, we have made incredible progress in not only understanding the underlying biology of a class of gastrointestinal disorders but also concrete advances in bringing forward a therapy for patients suffering from these debilitating conditions. These studies are laying down the foundation for what we hope will introduce a new era in curing these devastating conditions to the benefit of future generations.”

“This opportunity further enhances the gift that the donor family has chosen to give upon authorizing donation. Through research medical advances and discoveries are made, research is the keystone of growth in the medical field.”

“This past year the livers that were procured through IIAM and its recovery partners have played an integral part in ensuring that thousands of new possible medications are safer for human use. Cells and enzymes derived from human tissues are essential in understanding how a new medication may affect a patient prior to clinical studies.”

“This was a beautiful and important donation. Everything about recovery and our work went well. The lungs and heart showed the stress of their abnormalities as expected but are of exceptional quality and will teach us so much, in structure and cellular content, about why they could not grow or function normally. We are forever grateful to the baby’s family for providing this most difficult gift. We will be sure to learn as much as possible to help other children with heart and lung failure due to extra chromosomes, heart and blood vessel differences that, one day, we will be able to treat effectively and save lives. We will be learning for years to come from this one small, precious gift.”

“Thanks to the generous donations, we have made incredible progress in not only understanding the underlying biology of a class of gastrointestinal disorders but also concrete advances in bringing forward a therapy for patients suffering from these debilitating conditions. These studies are laying down the foundation for what we hope will introduce a new era in curing these devastating conditions to the benefit of future generations.”

“We received the first pair of human specimens on Friday night. They arrived in good condition and were recovered in accordance with the protocol. The entire process from notification and screening to receiving the tissue went seamlessly. This is greatly appreciated.”

“We are very happy with the tissue we have received and the service. Everything was exceptional: the contact people, the delivery and the continuous updates. We are interested in obtaining more tissue. Thank you again and I am looking forward to continue working with you!”

“The donations made at tragic times in the lives of the families are invaluable to humanity. Through contributions to medical sciences, we may learn more about our own biology and lives may be saved.”

“Adverse drug effects — from pharmaceuticals for treatment of disease or alleviation of symptoms — may cause serious harm, and are a major societal problem. Most of these adverse effects are unique to humans and cannot be detected in laboratory animals. Because of our research using human tissues from IIAM, we have developed experimental approaches to detect human-specific adverse drug effects. These approaches are now part of FDA regulations and are used by pharmaceutical companies to develop new drugs with improved safety profiles. We thank IIAM for our continued collaboration.”

“The donation is absolutely invaluable to the research carried out in my laboratory. Without donations we would not be able to make the advances in understanding the root causes of a variety of lung diseases.”

“We have had a longstanding and meaningful relationship with IIAM for many years–together we have made a monumental difference to the science of research by honoring the donors’ and/or the donor families’ wishes to give selflessly during their tragedy.”

“On behalf of our company, the medical transplant community and transplant patients worldwide, I would like to thank you for your role in advancing the preservation of organs for transplantation. IIAM’s delivery of hearts, lungs and livers has been instrumental to our developing new technology for the preservation, monitoring, recovery and transport of hearts, lungs and livers using revolutionary warm blood perfusion instead of cold storage. With this new technology, every use is saving a life by giving patients a life-giving organ that they desperately need. Thank you for your partnership with us and especially to those donor families who make it all possible.”

“Over a number of years, a wide variety of excellent quality human tissue samples from over 300 individuals have been kindly donated to us with international research consent. Provided through IIAM, these human tissues have been and continue to be used in our laboratories in the UK to generate valuable information that aids the development of new drug therapies for conditions such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, migraine and asthma; and provides drug safety data to support the approval of testing in clinical trials. We’d like to thank all of the donors and donor families who helped us make important small steps in the search for more effective drugs.”

“IIAM’s flexibility and dedication has allowed us to work on projects investigating the safety and efficacy of over 300 potential new drugs. We would not have achieved this without the professionalism of the team at IIAM and their understanding of our needs as researchers. Human tissue research really isn’t an easy area of science, but the team at IIAM try to alleviate the difficulty for the end researcher. We look forward to continuing to expand the applications of human tissue and together with IIAM believe we are making a real impact on the quality of medicines entering clinical trials.”

“My company has realised the value of access to human tissue for a while now but getting hold of good quality tissue easily has been problematic. Therefore, the service that IIAM provides is a huge step forward. We have used the human lung material received from IIAM to aid our drug discovery research by studying the biological role and disease relevance of proteins that may be of therapeutic relevance in lung disease. For instance, we were able to gain valuable insights on a receptor found on macrophages that we are interested in. Most work on this receptor has been done in mice, so there was very little data available on human lung. The value that the material has added to respiratory research in my company has been recognised in other disease areas and as a result, my company has set up a larger agreement with IIAM. So IIAM tissue will become used for research on a number of different diseases. IIAM provides a very valuable service and is helping the discovery of new drugs in my company.”

“The urinary bladder studies have allowed us to uncover a diversity of contractile responses and confirm the interaction between the urothelium and the underlying muscle layer that previously was only postulated to occur in humans based on animal studies. For the Gastro-esophageal junction studies, there are very few animal models that have the same muscle fiber anatomy as the human and these are somewhat difficult to obtain for research purposes. Our continuing studies allow us to make important observations that help explain the functional studies performed using high resolution manometry coupled with high resolution ultrasonography, and are beginning to provide insight into the mechanisms behind the events that cause gastro-esophageal reflux disease.”

“Research is essential to improving the effectiveness of therapy, developing new therapy, and better understanding disease processes. Research is a long term approach to saving lives but an essential one.”

“Donated human tissue is used in our vitro drug permeation and metabolism models to study specific biological mechanisms involved in the absorption and disposition of drugs and to predict potential drug-drug interactions that could affect the safety of a new drug once it reaches the clinic. We are thankful to IIAM recovery and administrative teams for helping us to meet our research objectives and look forward to our continued partnership.”

“Research is imperative to the medical community and the general public because of the ongoing development of knowledge, innovations, and science that lead to new discoveries, further research, and treatments/therapies that would otherwise not be possible/achievable without the donor/donor families. For most donor families, knowing their loved one has made a difference through research is very meaningful to them. ”

“I think of the progress. We would have NOTHING without research. The families of donors who choose to donate through research are so selfless, and should understand that their loved one could be part of medical breakthroughs that save lives. Each and every research donor has the opportunity to change the scope of medicine, and that’s something really special to think about; that one donor really can make a change.”