Your Support goes

a long way

Ever wondered where your donations go?

When you support the Hummingbirds and Hummingbird Charms by attending an event - your money goes directly to the O’Brien Foundation who support the O’Brien Institute department of St Vincent’s Institute.

The O’Brien Institute department conducts internationally recognised scientific research into clinical problems typically treated by plastic surgeons. Striking advances have been made by the O’Brien Institute department researchers in the delicate craft of transplantation surgery and the transfer of body parts and tissues by microsurgical techniques to reconstruct patients maimed by trauma, cancer, burns and congenital deformity. The work of the O’Brien Institute department is based on reconstructive surgery, however, the goal is not only limited to reconstructing body parts; but also to rebuilding patients as a whole and restoring hope and human dignity. Frequently this involves repairing disfigurement and disability to give people confidence, identity, capacity and personal fulfilment. Having been pioneers in clinical and experimental microsurgery research, the O’Brien Institute department is now at the forefront of research into regenerative surgery and tissue engineering.

Engineered “beating heart” tissue

Researchers at the O’Brien Institute department have genetically reprogrammed human skin cells to become stem cells, which they further changed into heart cells using chemical and electrical stimulation……. ..

The first application for this beating heart tissue will be for drug testing………………………….

Mini Organs

Researchers at the O’Brien Institute department have used human cell regeneration techniques to successfully build mini livers in a dish as the first step to grow liver tissue for transplants……………….

The experimental organs being developed at the O’Brien Institute department are tiny, just a few millimetres long, and will be used initially to test drugs and eventually to treat disease…………………….

Doctors are already using these tiny livers to better understand diseases like cancer and to test drugs. The goal, though, is to build a new liver and transplant it into a patient.

Why support the O’Brien Foundation?

The O’Brien Foundation celebrates 50 years of supporting the work of the O’Brien Institute with it’s developing innovations that have become the mainstay in clinical plastic surgery around the world. For example, more than 200 surgically trained researchers have completed Fellowships at the Institute since 1972 taking their knowledge back to their home countries. This is an incredibly exciting time. We ask you to join us on this inspiring journey. ………….

With your support the Hummingbirds hope to assist in providing more Australian and overseas Research Fellowships, not only advancing our knowledge quicker but sharing it globally.

Work on problems after surgical cancer resection, lymphoedema (limb swelling due to removal of lymph nodes housing cancer spread) and cardiac dysfunction is supported. We also hope to support continue working on diseases that no one else is investigating such as Lipoedema, a chronic disorder of fat tissue and lymphatic vessels that can be so debilitating that people are not able to walk…..

The future is arriving quicker than many of us may have thought possible but there is still plenty of work to do.

We look forward to welcoming your support at our events and working together to make this vision a reality.

Unique position of the O’Brien Institute department

For transplants to work, it is not enough to grow tissue in a dish. You must be able to build the tissue with the correct structure required to function as an organ and it must have blood vessels that will enable it to survive in the patient. These requirements put the O’Brien Institute department in the premier position to pioneer this research because the development and connection of new blood vessels is a concept fundamental to plastic surgery and the O’Brien Institute department team consists of plastic surgeons, trained microsurgeons and scientists and has a close working relationship with the clinical plastic surgery unit at St Vincent’s Hospital. In addition, they have developed a platform technology for generating new blood vessels in tissue engineered products and organs which will be essential for transplants to be successful.

……..