ABSTRACT
Human brain banking has become an essential part of the research landscape in neurodegenerative disorders and neurobiology. The demand for high quality banked tissue has been on a steady rise for quite some time. Advanced research studies, including proteomics, metabolomics, m-RNA micro arrays, and genomics, are fast becoming the standard in neuroscience investigations. Since many investigators study human diseases or biological processes, it is therefore not a surprise that human tissue is in high demand to verify findings from animal models of disease. Many leading neuroscientists are focusing a large component of their research on techniques that require the collection of the highest quality of human brain tissue. The Kathleen Price Bryan Brain Bank (KPBBB; https://adrc. mc.duke.edu/BB.htm) at Duke University Medical Center (DUMC) in Durham, North Carolina, has over 20 years of experience with this process (1). Successful human brain banking requires not only attention to the users’ needs for the highest quality of tissue, but it is also imperative for brain bankers to ensure that the donor’s wishes are honored. There have been great strides on a national level to facilitate the availability and distribution of these resources to the ever-growing demand in the neuroscience community. The National Institute on Aging (NIA) through the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center (NACC) has created an infrastructure and informatics network to support collaboration among the individual NIA-funded Alzheimer’s Disease Centers (ADCs) and to serve as a resource for the neuroscience research community. The banked tissue thus obtained is an invaluable resource available to qualified researchers. This chapter describes gen-
2.1 Introduction .................................................................................................... 17 2.2 Tissue Procurement and Storage .................................................................... 18 2.3 Other Considerations ......................................................................................22 References ................................................................................................................23
