INFORMATION FOR INVESTIGATORS
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The Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center is funded by the NIH, as well as several private organizations, to serve as a vital resource for the collection and distribution of postmortem brain tissues for medical research into the causes of devastating neurological and psychiatric disorders. All tissue diagnoses are confirmed by retrospective review of clinical records and a comprehensive neuropathological examination.
All disbursements from HBTRC are made at no cost to the recipient laboratory.
Tissue Preparation
Tissue samples are available in the following preparations:
- Fresh quick-frozen tissue blocks or coronal sections (nitrogen vapor or dry ice frozen)
- Passive frozen hemispheres (custom dissection of specific anatomic regions)
- Formalin-fixed hemispheres (custom dissection of specific anatomic regions)
- Under some circumstances, paraffin-embedded sections may also be available
Tissue Requests
The NeuroBioBank, a NIH-funded repository of human brain tissue and associated clinical data, was established in September 2013 as a national, centralized resource so that investigators could obtain high-quality, postmortem human brain tissue and further the understanding of the neurological basis for mental disorders.
Investigators should submit requests for postmortem brain tissue through the NeuroBioBank.
Acceptable Diagnoses
Normal Controls (no brain disorders)
- In order to perform research brain disorders, it is vital to collect brains from individuals without brain disorders (controls), which the HBTRC gratefully accepts. Control brains allow us to expand our knowledge of the human brain and to understand what changes occur in people suffering from brain disorders.
Psychiatric Disorders
- Bipolar disorder
- Borderline personality disorder
- Depression
- Obsessive compulsive disorder
- Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- Schizophrenia
- Tourette's syndrome
- Eating Disorders (anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder)
Neurological Disorders
- Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
- Corticobasal degeneration
- Frontotemporal dementia
- Huntington’s disease / HD relatives “at risk”
- Lewy body disease
- Multiple sclerosis (MS)
- Multiple system atrophy (MSA)
- Parkinson’s disease
- Pick’s disease
- Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP)
- Seizure disorder and epilepsy
- Traumatic brain injury (TBI or chronic traumatic encephalopathy)
- Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome)
- Restless legs syndrome (RLS; Willis-Ekbom Disease)
- Dystonias
Neurodevelopmental Disorders
- Asperger’s Syndrome
- Batten’s disease
- Down’s syndrome
- Fragile X syndrome
- Intellectual disability
- Pediatric developmental disorders (PDD)
- Tay-Sachs disease
- Rett syndrome
- CDKL5 Disorder
- FOXG1 Syndrome
Special Collections
- Dystonia (Dystonia Medical Research Foundation - www.dystonia-foundation.org)
- Restless legs syndrome (Restless Legs Syndrome Foundation - www.rls.org/)
- Rett syndrome (International Rett Syndrome Association - www.rettsyndrome.org)
- Tourette syndrome / Tourette syndrome family members (Tourette Syndrome Association - tsa-usa.org)
- Rapid-onset Obesity with Hypothalamic dysregulation, Hypoventilation, and Autonomic
Dysregulation (ROHHAD Fight - www.rohhadfight.org/) - FOXG1 syndrome (International FOXG1 Foundation - https://foxg1.org/)
- CDKL5 syndrome (Internation Foundation for CDKL5 Research - https://www.cdkl5.com/)
