Live On Nebraska receives UNMC’s Community Service to Research Award

It all started with a conversation in a morgue in 2012.
 
The Douglas County coroner was talking to Alexey Kamenskiy, Ph.D., and Jason MacTaggart, M.D., associate professors, surgery, at the University of Nebraska Medical Center about the organ and tissue donor organization, Live On Nebraska.
 
That conversation led to discussions, which led to a collaboration that has created the world’s largest interlinked database of human arteries providing mechanical, structural and demographic characteristics to researchers.
 
This most valuable collaboration with a community organization – one that offers life and hope – was recognized earlier this month with the presentation of UNMC’s Community Service to Research Award to Live On Nebraska at the Distinguished Scientist Awards Ceremony at UNMC.
 
Live On Nebraska, formerly known as the Nebraska Organ Recovery System, provides UNMC’s surgery department with human arterial tissues from organ and tissue donors.
 
One of 58 organ procurement organizations throughout the country, Live On Nebraska is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to saving and healing lives through organ and tissue donation. It serves Nebraska and Pottawattamie County in Iowa.
 
In the past six years, Live On Nebraska has provided UNMC laboratories with arteries from 593 human subjects in a wide range of ages and continues to provide tissue almost daily, Dr. Kamenskiy said.
 
“The critical data we have obtained from this collaboration enables us to develop exciting therapies that improve the health and wellness of our community,” he said. “It’s a very unique resource that few academic institutions in the world have access to.”
 
The collaboration provided the data required to secure $5 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense to work on projects that required human arterial tissues.
 
Dr. Kamenskiy said a small fragment of these data have been published in 10 peer-reviewed manuscripts and presented at countless professional meetings.
 
“Many more grant and manuscript submissions using these new exciting findings of human artery function and pathophysiology will follow in years to come,” he predicted.
 
Dr. Kamenskiy present the Community Service to Research Award to Live On Nebraska’s Kyle Herber, CEO, and Tom Woodford, chief operating officer.
 
“This is a big honor for us, but the real credit belongs to donors and their families who want to advance research,” Herber said. “This research is possible because of them. Credit also goes to our staff who recover those precious gifts and honor the wishes of the donors.”
 
We are Nebraska Medicine and UNMC. Our mission is to lead the world in transforming lives to create a healthy future for all individuals and communities through premier educational programs, innovative research and extraordinary patient care.
 
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