Brain Tissue Repository for Researchers

Tissues accumulated in the Oregon Brain Bank are made available to researchers according to established protocols.

Mission
The mission of the Neuropathology Core is to 1) establish the diagnosis of brain disease through a complete evaluation of autopsy tissue, and 2) to make tissue not required for diagnosis available for researchers who study the causes and processes of brain diseases.

Focus
OHSU studies have been directed to patients demonstrating healthy aging and to tissue alterations that depart from this and are associated with symptomatic brain disease.

Tissue Requests

Requests for tissue from the Oregon Brain Bank should be directed to Randall Woltjer, M.D., Ph.D. He will be glad to communicate with investigators regarding their tissue needs and to assist them in identifying suitable materials for their studies. Material Transfer Agreements between the requesting and sending institutions are needed before shipment.

Randall L. Woltjer, M.D., Ph.D.
Oregon Brain Bank
OHSU Department of Pathology
3181 S.W. Sam Jackson Park Road
Mail Code L113 
Portland, OR 97239
503-494-8276
woltjerr@ohsu.edu

Protocols

These are human tissues and as such must be considered potentially infectious. Establishment of a diagnosis does not exclude the possibility of concomitant additional processes. 

Precautions

Flash-frozen tissues for potential biochemical and molecular biologic studies are obtained from nearly all cases, with extensive sampling in select instances. In most cases, 22 sections are taken following formalin fixation from all lobes of the left and right hemispheres, the white matter, deep gray structures, brainstem, cerebellum and spinal cord (as available). The sections are routinely stained with hematoxylin and eosin/Luxol fast blue, Bielschowski silver staining, Congo Red and for hyperphosphorylated tau and a-synuclein by immunohistochemistry.

This degree of sampling allows classification based on the NIA-Reagan Institute criteria for AD pathologic changes (Working Group on Molecular and Biochemical Markers of Alzheimer's Disease, 1998), Dementia with Lewy Bodies consensus criteria (Consensus guidelines for the clinical and pathologic diagnosis of dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB Consortium on DLB International Workshop, 1996), Frontotemporal Dementia consensus criteria (Work Group on Frontotemporal Dementia and Pick's Disease, 2000), Braak staging of Lewy bodies (Braak, H. et al., 2003), and the Honolulu Asian-American Study criteria for microvascular lesions (White, L, et al., 2002).