ISBER would like to present the following ISBER Corner article on, The Experts Speak: Challenges in Banking Brain Tissue for Research to our membership, by A. Rush, C. Weil, L. Siminoff, C. Griffin, C.L. Paul, A. Mahadevan and G. Sutherland.
The acute shortage of human brain tissue to fuel the research that scientists, clinicians, and patient advocates say is necessary to advance the treatment of neurogenerative diseases is slowing scientific discovery. Brain biobanks play an essential role in accelerating the development of innovative neurotechnologies, yet remain limited in numbers, and narrow in their scope and the distribution of samples. Biobanking whole brains shares many common activities with the broader field of human tissue biobanking. Although both streams of biobanking ultimately aim to facilitate health and medical research, some aspects of brain banking are unique. These particularities of brain donation and banking present unique challenges for internal and external brain banking stakeholders.
First, whole brains are not able to be collected or stored through the same clinical pathway as other biobankable tissue, for example, remnants from surgical cancer removal, as specialist postmortem expertise and facilities are required for retrieval. This has both practical and governance implications for brain banks, affecting their ability to facilitate and access brains. To the public, the whole brain can be perceived as special or different than other bodily organs and tissue for potential donation for research. This can impact on the choice to participate in brain donation programs, particularly as the final choice to consent is generally reliant on third party family members. Finally, from a researcher perspective, the human brain displays greater functional and cellular heterogeneity, and more complex neural pathways relative to lower mammal brains. These characteristics can render alternative experimental resources less desirable and create a greater demand for whole brains.
We asked four brain banking experts to discuss their perspective on the same question: What are the most pressing challenges for brain banking in the current health and medical research landscape?
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