Discover NeuRA’s World-Class Brain Bank Facility
The Sydney Brain Bank at NeuRA facilitates world-class research and breakthroughs in ageing and neurodegenerative disorders. It has been operating since 2005 and has collected brain tissue from over 500 donors. Globally, the Sydney Brain Bank supplies tissue to 30-40 research projects a year, with many of these projects a collaborative effort with external research institutions.
Led by Dr Claire Shepherd, recently appointed to the position of Director of the Sydney Brain Bank, the team has developed a new method which will allow them to characterise one of the key pathologies underlying Alzheimer’s disease using a simpler, cost-effective and less labour-intensive method without compromising on the quality and sensitivity of the diagnosis.
“At the Sydney Brain Bank, we collect, characterise and store the brain tissue from individuals that have died from ageing or neurodegenerative disorders so that we can facilitate medical research,” said Dr Shepherd.
“This new method will be advantageous because post-mortem human brain research takes a lot of time and money to do well – we undertake a comprehensive screen of every brain we collect. Doing this more cost effectively will allow us to collect more cases and facilitate more research into ageing and neurodegenerative disorders.”
Working with a large number of clinical research programs means the majority of donors have been involved in longitudinal clinical research studies. This data allows researchers to understand the relationship between someone’s clinical symptoms in life and the pathology in their brains at death.
There is currently no definitive diagnosis for these disorders in life. The Sydney Brain Bank at NeuRA uses research diagnostic criteria to characterise the brain changes and identify the specific neurodegenerative disease they were suffering from.
During 2017, Dr Claire Shepherd travelled to the UK to visit several British Brain Banks and to work with their researchers to understand their processes and share ideas and techniques.
By working with international researchers, NeuRA aims to strengthen and harness a more collaborative global approach between the various Brain Banks and to help address many research questions – working together is a more powerful way to go.
The Sydney Brain Bank is funded by NeuRA and UNSW Sydney and our generous donors and receives no government support.
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