The Oxford Control Brain Collection

随着我们社会的老龄化，脑部疾病的负担越来越重。目前，这些疾病中几乎没有可治疗的。尽管在过去的几年里，遗传学和随后的实验室疾病建模发生了革命，但这并没有为患者带来重大进展。人们越来越认识到，该领域的突破需要直接研究人类大脑。特别是，了解神经系统疾病新风险基因的表达如何在正常大脑的不同区域受到调节，以便将其与疾病状态进行比较，这一点很重要。虽然鼓励患有特定疾病的捐赠者在死后捐赠脑组织，但对于健康个体的捐赠却不是这样。这导致作为比较物必不可少的正常组织严重短缺。众所周知，当敏感地接触时，近亲通常愿意在亲属去世后帮助捐赠组织。在这里，我们响应MRC的呼吁，帮助解决死后正常脑组织捐赠的短缺问题。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，并且有一个由医生和组织联络人员组成的团队，他们密切合作。我们已经参与了旨在改善冠状解剖系统和移植组织捐赠的研究。我们还举办了新的自闭症脑库，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献脑组织用于研究。在此，我们要求支持整合患者丧亲服务和移植协调，以增加对照脑的捐赠。我们预计这种方法每年将带来多达50个新的大脑捐赠。通过现有的基础设施和牛津生物医学研究中心的支持，我们将有一个额外的实验室助理来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都将通过新的MRC英国脑库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.