Tissue Access
Tissue Access for TBI research
Many advances in management of patients with TBI have been informed by landmark neuropathology studies leveraging unique resources of human tissue samples available for research applications, both in the acute and late phases after TBI. This includes our current understanding of TBI associated pathologies such as ischaemia, diffuse axonal injury, acute and chronic neuroinflammation, and TBI-related neurodegeneration.
TBI-REPORTER will build on these achievements by coordinating standardized research tissue acquisition across UK partner sites, with archiving via the internationally regarded, Glasgow TBI Archive, and the Cambridge Brain Bank. Tissue samples will then be discoverable and accessible through BRAIN-UK for investigator led studies through the TBI-REPORTER platform and via the international, multi-centre TBI neuropathology archives network, CONNECT-TBI.
• In addition, some neurosurgical services are banking surgical tissue with consent for research, obtained at the time of operation for a range of surgical procedures and indications. These collections tend to have more restricted access but may be open to collaboration enquiries on a one-to-one basis.
• The links and documents below provide information about each of the tissue banking initiatives, along with a contact point for enquiries about collaboration.
- Cambridge Clinicopathological Correlations in Neurotrauma (CCCN)
- Cambridge Neurosurgical Tissue Banking Initiative
- Glasgow Traumatic Brain Injury Archive
- King’s Brain Bank
• We welcome other research groups who have similar initiatives and would like to make their collections discoverable for requests for collaborative research.
• We have made a start on collating useful references for tissue access – please feel free to provide references by sending them to tbi-reporter@medschl.cam.ac.uk, with “References for tissue access,” in the email subject heading, and we will add to the list. Please note that this list of references is regarding the techniques, setup, protocols, and maintenance of tissue banks for TBI research – not papers addressing the science based on such tissue.
a. Naked eye appearance of partially dissected research brain donation from a 70 year old former footballer with dementia.
b. Brain tissue section from an individual dying within 48h of a severe TBI showing typical amyloid precursor protein accumulation of diffuse axonal injury.
c. Section from the case in image a showing typical hyperphosphorylated tau pathology of chronic traumatic encephalopathy.