The Oxford Control Brain Collection

随着我们社会的老龄化，大脑疾病的负担正在增加。这些疾病目前很少能治愈。尽管过去几年在遗传学和随后的实验室疾病建模方面发生了革命，但这并没有转化为患者的重大进展。人们越来越认识到，该领域的突破需要直接研究人脑。特别是，重要的是要了解神经系统疾病的新风险基因的表达是如何在正常大脑的不同区域进行调节的，以便将其与疾病状态进行比较。虽然鼓励患有特定疾病的捐赠者在死后捐赠脑组织，但健康个体的捐赠情况并非如此。这导致了作为比较物所必需的正常组织的严重短缺。众所周知，当敏感地接近时，近亲往往愿意在亲属去世后帮助组织捐赠。在这里，我们响应MRC的呼吁，帮助解决死后正常脑组织捐赠短缺的问题。牛津大学在这方面处于有利地位，因为我们在脑库方面经验丰富，并且拥有一支密切合作的医生和组织联络人员团队。我们已经参与了旨在改善验尸系统和组织移植捐赠的研究。我们还主办了新的自闭症大脑银行，以支持对一种常见疾病的生物学研究，目前几乎没有任何组织可用。参与这些研究的人将被要求考虑捐赠脑组织用于研究。在这里，我们要求支持整合丧亲和移植协调的病人服务，以增加控制大脑的捐赠。我们预计，这种方法每年将产生多达50个新的大脑捐赠。有了额外的实验室助理，我们将能够通过我们现有的基础设施和牛津生物医学研究中心的支持，确保高质量的组织保存和表征。通过这种方法收集的任何组织将通过新的MRC英国大脑银行网络免费提供给研究人员，该网络以最高的道德和科学标准运作。

The burden of brain diseases is increasing as our society ages. Few of these conditions are currently treatable. Although the last few years have seen a revolution in the genetics and subsequent modelling of diseases in the laboratory, this has not translated into significant progress for patients. It is increasingly recognised that breakthroughs in the field require the direct study of the human brain. In particular, it is important to understand how the expression of new risk genes for neurological disease is regulated in different regions of the normal brain in order to compare it with the disease state. Whilst prospective donation of brain tissue after death is encouraged from donors with specific diseases, this is not the case for donations from healthy individuals. This has resulted in a severe shortage of normal tissue which is essential as a comparator. It is known that when approached sensitively, next of kin are often willing to help with tissue donation following the death of a relative. Here we respond to a call by the MRC to help address the shortage of normal brain tissue donations after death. Oxford is well placed for this as we are experienced in brain banking and have a team of physicians and tissue liaison staff that work closely together. We are already involved in research that aims to improve the Coronial autopsy system and the donation of tissue for transplantation. We are also hosting the new Autism Brain Bank to support research into the biology of a common disease where hardly any tissue is currently available. People who participate in these studies will be asked to consider brain tissue donation for research. Here we ask for support to integrate the patient services for bereavement and transplant coordination to increase the donation of control brains. We anticipate that this approach will result in up to 50 new brain donations per year. With an additional laboratory assistant we will be in a position to ensure high quality tissue preservation and characterisation through our existing infrastructure and support by the Oxford Biomedical Research Centre. Any tissue collected through this approach will be made freely available for researchers via the new MRC UK Brain Banking network which operates at the highest ethical and scientific standards.