ABSTRACT
Biobanks are set to become the norm. The explosion of new and powerful technologies like genomics and other multiomics has catapulted research from individual laboratories to multi-institutional and international partners. Today, with increasing life span, and the rising incidence of brain diseases, Brain Banks have become an invaluable source for unravelling the pathogenesis of several brain disorders, and develop effective therapies. The article briefly reviews the evolution of brain banking, rise of global networks, with a brief overview of steps involved from donor recruitment, protocols of processing, storage, annotation, and tissue distribution. The ethics of biobanking is one of the most controversial issues in bioethics, the key issues being consent, confidentiality, and commercialisation. Regulatory authorities in different countries and in India, the Indian Council of Medical Research has taken a lead to formulate new ethical guidelines for research involving human participants protecting rights, and well-being of research participants. Although brain banks have been established in the 1960s, in India, the first Brain Bank was established in 1995 at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru. Now a network with two more Brain banks is being established in the country. The challenges and benefits of establishing the first Brain Bank as a National Research Facility in India is shared. For optimising available resources and promote brain banking, it is essential for medical professionals, and the public to perceive the crucial advantage in conversion of biological waste into invaluable resources for neuroscience. This will be the greatest “gift of hope” that we can offer for the future generations to overcome hitherto untreatable disorders such as dementias.
ABSTRACT
Advances in cellular and molecular biology underpin most current therapeutic advances in medicine. Such advances for neurological and neurodegenerative diseases are hindered by the lack of similar specimens. It is becoming increasingly evident that greater access to human brain tissue is necessary to understand both the cellular biology of these diseases and their variation. Research in these areas is vital to the development of viable therapeutic options for these currently untreatable diseases. The development and coordination of human brain specimen collection through brain banks is evolving. This perspective article from the Sydney Brain Bank reviews data concerning the best ways to collect and store material for different research purposes.
Subject(s)
Humans , Aging , Pathology , Physiology , Biomedical Research , Methods , Brain , Pathology , Neurodegenerative Diseases , Pathology , Therapeutics , Tissue Banks , Tissue PreservationABSTRACT
It is widely accepted that neurobiological abnormalities underlie the symptoms of psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and unipolar or bipolar affective disorders. New molecular methods, computer-assisted quantification techniques and neurobiological investigation methods that can be applied to the human brain are all used in post-mortem investigations of psychiatric disorders. The following article describes modern quantitative methods and recent post-mortem findings in schizophrenia and affective disorders. Using our brain bank as an example, necessary considerations of modern brain banking are addressed such as ethical considerations, clinical work-up, preparation techniques and the organization of a brain bank, the value of modern brain banking for investigations of psychiatric disorders is summarized.