Ravid R, Swaab D F
Netherlands Brain Bank, Amsterdam.
J Neural Transm Suppl. 1993;39:143-53.
The number of sophisticated neurobiological techniques which can be applied on human brain has rapidly increased and causes an increased demand for post-mortem human brain tissue for research purposes. Brain banks, which collect post-mortem tissue from patients who suffered from neurological and psychiatric disorders, have become an important link between clinicians, scientists and neuropathologists involved in aging and dementia research. Due to the large variability of the material, there are many drawbacks in the use of post-mortem brains. Therefore, collecting human brain tissue for research should include matching for several factors, both ante-mortem and post-mortem. Some of the most important ante-mortem factors include age, sex, agonal state, seasonal alterations, circadian variation and clock time of death. The post-mortem factors which should be matched for include the post-mortem delay, fixation and storage time and lateralization. The material and data on aging and dementia, collected by the Netherlands Brain Bank in the past six years will serve in the present paper to illustrate the wide variety of potentialities and pitfalls in the use of post-mortem human brain tissue. Brain Bank organizations for various neurological diseases form at present an important clinico-pathological link in aging and dementia research and the availability of post-mortem human brain tissue makes it possible to investigate those diseases for which no animal model is available. In order to provide research groups with post-mortem brain tissue from Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients and controls, a brain bank was established by the end of 1985 in The Netherlands Institute for Brain Research. This brain bank is based upon research projects submitted in advance, specifying a variety of requirements such as: total number of brains needed, kind of fixation, agonal state, post-mortem delay, exact anatomical boundaries of the brain region, kind of fixation and other treatment requirements of the tissue. This Brain Bank has got two unique features: 1. Human brain tissue is obtained by means of rapid autopsies with a very short post-mortem delay, ranging between 2-4 hour. 2. Fresh brain dissection procedure is used, which is a difficult regime to establish, requiring qualified staff at inconvenient times. This dissection procedure is necessary for the immediate use of fresh tissue and advantageous in increasing the range of morphological, neurochemical, immunocytochemical, metabolic and other procedures which can be applied to tissues fixed in a different way or rapidly frozen brain tissue free of freezing artifacts.
可应用于人类大脑的精密神经生物学技术数量迅速增加，这导致对用于研究目的的死后人类脑组织的需求也随之增加。脑库从患有神经和精神疾病的患者身上收集死后组织，已成为参与衰老和痴呆症研究的临床医生、科学家和神经病理学家之间的重要纽带。由于材料的巨大变异性，使用死后大脑存在许多缺点。因此，为研究收集人类脑组织应包括对生前和死后的几个因素进行匹配。一些最重要的生前因素包括年龄、性别、濒死状态、季节变化、昼夜节律变化和死亡时间。应匹配的死后因素包括死后延迟、固定和储存时间以及脑叶定位。荷兰脑库在过去六年中收集的有关衰老和痴呆症的材料和数据将在本文中用于说明使用死后人类脑组织的各种潜力和陷阱。目前，针对各种神经疾病的脑库组织在衰老和痴呆症研究中形成了重要的临床病理联系，死后人类脑组织的可得性使得研究那些没有动物模型的疾病成为可能。为了向研究小组提供来自阿尔茨海默病（AD）患者和对照组的死后脑组织，1985年底在荷兰脑研究所建立了一个脑库。这个脑库基于预先提交的研究项目，规定了各种要求，如：所需大脑总数、固定方式、濒死状态、死后延迟、脑区的确切解剖边界、固定方式以及组织的其他处理要求。这个脑库有两个独特之处：1. 人类脑组织是通过快速尸检获得的，死后延迟非常短，在2至4小时之间。2. 使用新鲜脑解剖程序，这是一个难以建立的方案，需要在不方便的时间配备合格的工作人员。这种解剖程序对于立即使用新鲜组织是必要的，并且有利于增加可应用于以不同方式固定的组织或无冷冻假象的快速冷冻脑组织的形态学、神经化学、免疫细胞化学、代谢及其他程序的范围。
