BRAIN UK: accessing NHS tissue archives for neuroscience research

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.

BRAIN UK is a virtual brain bank providing access to human tissue from more than 60,000 cases held in 13 NHS regional neuroscience centres across the UK. All ethical and NHS R&D permissions have been granted for blanket use of this tissue for researchers in the UK and overseas, so saving researchers considerable time and effort by removing these bureaucratic barriers to the use of human tissue. Many substantial advances in the understanding of neurological diseases have been made over the past decades from direct observations made on post mortem human tissue and further advances are to be anticipated. Animal models of disease have an important role, but also have their limitations. Types of tissue encompassed by BRAIN UK are the brain and associated components including the spinal cord, nerves, muscle, eye and samples of other organs when relevant to neurological disease. BRAIN UK is not limited to diseases that can attract sufficient funding for dedicated brain banks and is therefore complementary to them. For example, BRAIN UK has many hundreds of cases of head injury, stroke and mental health disorders and also examples of many rare conditions such as Progressive multifocal leucoencephalopathy and Neuromyelitis optica. The work in collecting, processing, categorising and archiving the samples has already been performed within the NHS; in providing a mechanism for access to this tissue for research BRAIN UK provides exceptional added value. With this proposal for continued funding for BRAIN UK we aim to: continue providing access to tissue for researchers, further refine the database for greater precision in access to information and put into place a mechanism to permit inclusion of new cases obtained now and into the future.