Northwestern ADRC Non competing supplement application

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On behalf of the Northwestern ADRC, we are submitting this supplement application to request funding for expenses that were not requested in our P30 budget to support our brain autopsy program, because they were not required at the time of our initial application. As of January 2022, the Northwestern Memorial Hospital (NMH) Department of Pathology changed their billing policy for all hospital-incurred autopsies. Up to that date, all autopsies on any patient who was affiliated with a Northwestern Medicine physician were complimentary, including those obtained for the research participants enrolled in the Northwestern ADRC Clinical Core. All costs were covered including those for brain removal and storage and tissue processing. From January 2022 onward, this policy has changed such that free autopsies are provided only on those patients who expire while they are inpatients admitted to the hospital at NMH. Since most of our participants die at home or in hospice or at another hospital, we will require additional funding that was not requested in our prior applications, particularly in the last 5 year competing renewal, funded in 2021. As a result, the current application is requesting a supplement to cover the costs of brain autopsies carried out in the Department of Pathology at NMH for the Northwestern ADRC Clinical Core. Our Center estimates to conduct 50 brain autopsies per year at NMH. The request (see budget justification) includes the cost for brain removal and storage, tissue processing, and chemicals and reagents required for storage and processing. In addition, on occasion, our ADRC Neuropathology Core is asked to assist in brain removal for a participant at another ADRC who lives close to our facility. We are thus also asking for costs to cover brain removal, storage and shipping for those instances. Our brain autopsy program has been highly successful and even during the pandemic benefitted from the Department of Pathology's careful adjustments to allow safe brain removal of participants who have died since the pandemic began.