The specific aims of the Brain Bank Core are to obtain, characterize, describe, dissect, preserve and distribute to different researchers engaged in Alzheimer's disease research, brain tissues obtained from normal control, and Alzheimer's disease subjects. The Brain Bank Core will obtain and bank brain tissues from as many of the subjects enrolled by the Recruitment and Diagnosis Core and studied by the Neurophyschology project as possible. The Brain Bank Core will perform autopsies with the lease possible post-mortem delay, and will maintain permanently all pertinent specimen related information in a manner accessible to all past, present and future investigators using the Brain Bank. The acquisition and banking of the projected cohorts will provide a unique resource to only for the proposed studies, but for generations of studies and investigators to come. The brain banking procedures outlined in this application have been designed to preserved the tissues optimally for as broad a set of experimental methodologies as possible. After extraction, brain specimens will be photographed, weighted and any gross lesions and abnormalities note. The right half of the brain will be preserved in paraformaldehyde for neuropathological and neuroanatomical studies. The left half will be dissected in 0.5-0.8 cm coronal slabs, and after identification of the structures in each slab they will be snap frozen in liquid freon. Frozen slabs will be kept at -80C until sub-dissected for use by specific studies. The Brain Bank Core will serve all five projects proposed in this application either directly or indirectly. The Brain Bank Core will contribute to the Neuropsychology, Family History and Acute Phase Reactants projects (Projects 1, 2 and 4) by performing autopsies of subjects who have been studied in life. The neuropathological information obtained (Project 5) on these cases will enhance the Neuropsychology project by providing data on the neuropathological of cognitive decline in the aged. The Neurochemistry project (Project 3) will use the tissues banked by this core to investigate the neurochemical correlates of cognitive decline in the aged. The procedures used by the Brain Bank Core have been optimized to enhance and facilitate multiple neurochemical studies of each case banked. In addition the acquisition and banking of brain tissues from this unique cohort of subjects will augment the utility of the Brain Bank for projects funded by other grants (eg., ADRC, Cellular and Molecular Markers in Schizophrenia-PPG), by providing specimens from normal elderly controls whose cognitive status has been confirmed by rigorous ante- mortem testing.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 306 publications
