A National Resource for Postmortem Brain Research

描述(由申请人提供)：哈佛脑组织资源中心(HBTRC)是一家全国性的资源，旨在获取、处理、存储高质量的尸检(PM)脑组织，并将其分发给神经科学界。HBTRC收集患有各种运动障碍(亨廷顿舞蹈症和帕金森氏病)、痴呆症(阿尔茨海默病、额颞痴呆)、严重精神病(精神分裂症和双相情感障碍)和自闭症的人的大脑。其功能的一个关键方面涉及获取代表广泛年龄范围的70名正常对照。在本供资期间，HBTRC继续保持其核心价值，即保持其运作的质量和效率。每年，HBTRC收集大约275-300个大脑，并将数千个组织样本分发给美国和国外的调查人员。作为这一努力的结果，HBTRC为神经科学家提供了特征明确的队列，其中包括与年龄、PMI、性别和大脑半球相匹配的患者和患病大脑。由于我们几乎所有的案件都是通过基于社区的转介获得的，因此将制度化、空虚和药物滥用的潜在混淆影响降至最低。为了方便大脑的捐赠和加工，HBTRC有一个网站，上面有所有必要的表格，包括a)捐赠者家庭的知情同意，b)参与切除的病理学家或Dieners处理大脑的说明，以及c)调查人员为他们的研究寻找组织的申请表。HBTRC还有一个用户交互数据库，这样从“脑库”接收组织的调查人员可以获得关键信息，如人口统计学和神经病理报告，以及大体解剖和组织切片的图像；为了提高我们组织的实用性，HBTRC对每个疾病的关键感兴趣区域进行基因表达谱分析，并将这些数据存储在国家脑数据库(NBD)中，这是一个公共领域储存库，从HBTRC接收组织的调查人员可以从那里下载这些原始数据。反过来，这些研究人员被鼓励将他们的研究结果“存放”在NBD上，以便研究同一疾病的同事可以将它们用于各自的研究。在下一个资助期，HBTRC将继续发挥其作为重要的国家资源的作用，向神经科学界分发具有良好特征的高质量组织。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center (HBTRC) is a national resource for the acquisition, processing, storage and distribution of high quality postmortem (PM) brain tissue to the neuroscience community. The HBTRC collects brains from individuals with a variety of movement disorders (Huntington's chorea and Parkinson's disease), dementias (Alzheimer's disease, frontotemporal dementias), major psychoses (schizophrenia and bipolar disorder) and autism. A key aspect of its functioning involves the acquisition of 70 normal controls representing a broad range of ages. During the current funding period, the HBTRC has continued its core value of maintaining the quality and efficiency of its operation. Each year, the HBTRC collects approximately 275-300 brains and distributes thousands of tissue samples to investigators in the U.S. and abroad. As a result of this effort, the HBTRC provides neuroscientists with well-characterized cohorts consisting of CONs and diseased brains matched for age, PMI, gender and hemisphere. Since almost all of our cases are obtained through community-based referrals, the potential confounding effects of institutionalization, inanition and substance abuse are minimized. To facilitate the donation and processing of brains, the HBTRC has a website with all the necessary forms including a) the Informed Consent for the donor families, b) instructions for handling brains by pathologists or dieners involved in removal, and c) application forms for investigators seeking tissue for their research. The HBTRC also has a User-Interactive Database, so that investigators who receive tissue from the "brain bank" can obtain critical information, such as demographics and neuropathology reports, as well as images of gross dissections and histological slides; To enhance the utility of our tissue, the HBTRC performs gene expression profiling on key regions of interest for each disorder and "deposits" this data in the National Brain Databank (NBD), a public domain repository from which investigators receiving tissue from the HBTRC can download this raw data. In turn, these investigators are encouraged to "deposit" their findings in the NBD so that colleagues studying the same disorder can use them for their respective studies. Over the next funding period, the HBTRC will continue its role as a vital national resource for the distribution of well-characterized, high quality tissue to the neuroscience community.