The Clínic-IDIBAPS Neurological Tissue Bank reaches 2,300 donations

The Neurological Tissue Bank (NTB) of the Biobank at IDIBAPS-Hospital Clínic Barcelona has received 2,300 nervous tissue donations. Nervous tissue samples are essential for research into neurological diseases as they open the door to discovering the mechanisms that trigger these pathologies and to looking for new treatments to combat them.

A little history

The NTB was created in 1988 under the umbrella of the University of Barcelona and under the direction of neurologist Eduard Tolosa, then the head of the Neurology Service, who is currently a researcher emeritus of the IDIBAPS groups Parkinson disease and other neurodegenerative movement disorders: clinical and experimental research.

The NTB received official recognition from the government of Catalonia in 1992 and in 2011 it became part of the IDIBAPS Biobank, which also includes the Tumours and Tissue Bank and the Biological Fluid Bank.

Over 250,000 samples available to the scientific community

Today, the NTB has more than 250,000 samples of nervous tissue (brain, spinal cord and cerebrospinal fluid) that “correspond to highly prevalent neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementias, as well as other less common ones such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Huntington’s disease, atypical Parkinsonian disorders and hereditary ataxias”, says Gemma Aragonès, coordinator of the NTB.

The NTB also keeps samples from people who died with a healthy brain and which serve as controls so that a sick brain can be compared with a healthy brain.

As Aragonès explains, “the NTB coordinates the collection, processing, storage and transfer of samples, but it is also a support platform for researchers”. Thus, the NTB offers expert advice from legal, technical and scientific points of view.

Requests for samples from around the world 

The NTB samples are available to national and international researchers. During 2022, more than 60 requests for samples and the provision of services were received, 25% of which came from abroad. “We have had requests from Norway, Germany, France, Great Britain, the United States, New Zealand and Japan”, Aragonès says, adding that “the BTN also participates in several international consortia as a benchmark brain bank in the processing and neuropathological study of these tissues”. Recently, the NTB has become part of the new EBRAINS infrastructure, a European platform devoted to neuroscience research.

The neuropathological studies carried out at the NTB have allowed researchers to describe new diseases such as autoimmune encephalitis due to anti-Iglon5 antibodies or, recently, the description of a new mutation in late-onset ataxia. The NTB also makes it possible to see in situ the effect that experimental drugs have had on the brains of donors who have participated in clinical trials for new drugs. On the other hand, the NTB also participates in scientific publications, collaborating with both internal and external researchers.

Post-mortem neuropathological diagnosis

The NTB also develops a clinical task, since it performs post-mortem neuropathological diagnoses coordinated by Iban Aldecoa of the Pathological Anatomy Service of the Hospital Clínic Barcelona. Post-mortem neuropathological diagnoses are essential to providing full care for patients with neurological diseases. These diagnoses are of interest both to patients referring doctors and to their relatives, who can confirm the neurological disease from which they were suffering.

2,300 donations... and more on the way 

To date, 2,300 donations of nervous tissue have been received and processed from all over Catalonia. There are also 1,762 potential future donors, of which about 340 would presumably provide control samples.

Living donors are recruited through the Donor Programme, managed by Laura Molina, and by NTB staff in coordination with the Neurology Service of Hospital Clínic Barcelona. In addition, five members of the NTB Internal Advisory Committee also come from the Neurology Service of the Hospital Clínic Barcelona.

“When someone who is registered as a neurological tissue donor dies, the NTB on-call team takes care of all procedures, from transferring the donor to extracting their nervous tissue and returning them to their family so they can perform the farewell ceremony and arrangements with the funeral homes”, Aragonès concludes.

You will find more information about the donation programme at this link.