BRAIN UK: accessing NHS tissue archives for neuroscience research

大脑（以及包括脊髓、神经、肌肉和眼睛在内的相关组成部分）对我们很重要，从本质上说，它使我们成为人类，并赋予我们身份和自我意识。它是由细胞组成的，这些细胞一旦在婴儿时期形成，就会伴随我们一生。不可避免的是，大脑是复杂的，可能会出现故障。神经系统任何部分的损害或疾病都可能导致身体残疾、精神疾病或可能导致死亡。在过去的几十年里，对尸检中保留的脑组织样本的研究使我们对神经系统疾病的理解取得了许多进展，并带来了新的治疗方法。人类脑部疾病的动物模型有所帮助，但有一个缺点，即它们不是真正的人类疾病本身，因此在某些情况下会产生误导。在过去的30-40年里，神经病理学家在英国全国范围内进行的工作，并仍在继续，已经收集了大量储存的脑组织样本。BRAIN UK的目标是对这些样本进行分类，并解决伦理和法律问题，以便为新的研究提供适当的样本。简化的申请/审查过程和通用伦理批准已经消除了许多直到最近阻碍研究人员的官僚障碍。研究人员现在可以通过BRAIN UK从6万多个病例中获取组织进行研究。当然，最终的目标是进一步提高我们对神经系统疾病发展机制的理解，并最终为神经系统疾病提供新的治疗或预防形式。

The brain (and associated components including the spinal cord, nerves, muscle and eye) is important to us, essentially making us humans and giving us our identity and self awareness. It is composed of cells which, once formed in infancy, have to last us a lifetime. Inevitably, the brain is complex and may malfunction. Damage to, or disease of, any part of the nervous system is likely to result in physical disability, mental illness or may cause death. Study of brain tissue samples retained at post mortem examinations has led to many of the advances in our understanding of neurological disease in the last few decades, and led to new treatments. Animal models of human brain diseases have been helpful, but have the disadvantage that they are not the actual human disease itself, and therefore have in some instances been misleading. Work performed in the NHS by neuropathologists over the past 30-40 years across the UK, and which continues, has led to very substantial collections of stored brain tissue samples. The objective of BRAIN UK is to catalogue these samples and address ethical and legal issues, in order to allow release of appropriate samples for new research studies. The stream-lined application/review process and generic ethical approval has removed many of the bureaucratic hurdles until recently hindering researchers. Researchers can now access tissue for their studies from more than 60,000 cases through BRAIN UK. The ultimate aim, of course, is to further improve our understanding of the mechanisms involved in the development of neurological disease and eventually provide new forms of treatment or prevention for diseases of the nervous system.