Linking organ donors and the medical/scientific research community: a US perspective

The International Institute for the Advancement of Medicine (IIAM) provides non-transplantable organs and tissues for medical and scientific research, education, and drug & device development. The benefits of using human organs and tissues for research are vast, and donating for research provides donor families with a valuable option if their loved one's organs are unsuitable for transplantation. The use of these organs and tissues enables the faster development of more efficacious drugs with improved safety profiles, and enhanced understanding of basic disease processes that directly affect humans. Human organs and tissues offer unique advantages over the use of animal organs and tissues as it is human diseases and conditions which we seek to treat, and so logically the results can be more directly applied. The added advantage of accessing non-transplantable, human organs is that they are in superb condition, and so experiments can be conducted in a very physiologically-relevant system. Although the US is a sizeable country with a large population and individual regulations governing human tissue collection and usage for each of the 50 states comprising the US this article will discuss how IIAM succeeds in immediately linking organ donors and qualified researchers, ultimately to the great benefit of patients.