Monkey Alcohol Tissue Research Resource (MATRR)

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PROJECT SUMMARY The “Monkey Alcohol Tissue Research Resource” (MATRR) is a multiple PI research resource award from Oregon Health & Science University and Baylor University. The MATRR has been highly successful in providing the alcohol research community access to tissue and data generated from cohorts of monkeys that have completed a standard protocol to study voluntary alcohol self-administration. The procedure results in a wide distribution of average daily ethanol intakes (g/kg) and the MATRR bioinformatics has established reliable, robust categories of drinking that encompass low, binge, heavy and very heavy chronic intake patterns. The necropsy procedure is fully refined and allows for the highest quality harvesting of all organs and tissues in the body. Prior to necropsy, registered users and other interested parties are contacted for custom tissue preparations, otherwise frozen and fixed tissue remain in the MATRR until requests are made through a dedicated web resource. All tissues are accompanied by data on organismal and alcohol intake variables to aid in rapid publication of findings. Importantly, the MATRR provides an opportunity for laboratories with specific expertise in organ pathology, neuroscience and genomics the ability to extend their research to a primate model with similar genetics, developmental processes, endocrinology, immunology, physiology and neuroanatomy to humans. Thus, the MATRR is unique to the alcohol research field in promoting a translational resource for mechanistic studies of alcohol-induced pathologies. The MATRR resource has exceeded all expectations in terms of tissue generation, inventory control, tissue requests, tissue utilization, data analytics, novel data generated, publications, newly funded projects and new research directions. In this renewal, we propose to add 3 more cohorts, with an expected accumulation of tissues and data from 20 cohorts of monkeys (total n=240 (162 ethanol, 78 control)). This has positioned the MATRR to fill experimental designs requiring large number of individuals, for example genetic and in vivo imaging datasets. The inventory control is aided by a unique web-based interface that also serves to administratively evaluate and act upon tissue requests. In total, we have 226 registered users and have shipped over 3,813 tissue samples from 5,590 tissue and data requests. With each accepted request an MTA is filed and timely progress reports are automatically requested. In the past funding, the resource has been extremely successful in the number of publications (48 in 48 months) from 22 different laboratories at 13 unique universities or Institutes. There remain great opportunities in further building and refining this resource. Our goal is to have the MATRR bioinformatics integrate data across disciplines, organs and individuals to generate knew knowledge of chronic alcohol use disorders. Finally, we acknowledge that in addition to building critical numbers for large scale data analyses, the opportunity exists to study additional tissue (such as fetal), variations in the protocol (such as necropsy in abstinence) and additional datasets such as sonography for liver elasticity.