Brain banks: the Oxford experience.

The organisation value and problems related to the setting up and running of Oxford brain banks to investigate Alzheimer's disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and AIDS are described. Most neuropathology departments have some sort of brain bank consisting of stored, fixed brains with microscopic sections prepared from selected parts of them to enable a neuropathological diagnosis to be made. Such routine stores are invaluable to return to in order that cases of particular conditions can be collected together and systematically studied. This was, indeed, the classical neuropathological method of research. Modern techniques of immunocytochemistry, applied if necessary after pretreatment of material to restore immunoreactivity of antigens, and of nucleic acid retrieval have enabled such routinely fixed material to be frequently put to further good use in ways previously never thought of to enhance understanding of neuropsychiatric disease. However, such neuropathology stores, or archives, are not quite what is meant normally by a brain bank. This latter term is generally used to refer to brain tissue stored additionally as frozen samples appropriate for a wide range of investigations, particularly biochemical ones. It is with this type of brain bank that this chapter is concerned. The development of brain banks has occurred mainly since the mid-1970's when it was demonstrated that post mortem brain samples could yield important information about many biochemical processes (Bowen et al., 1976). Most brain banks were developed initially to serve the research needs of their own neuropathologists and their immediate collaborators but surplus material was generally also made available to others.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)