Medical & Scientific Info
Brain Bank Tissue Collection History
Research over the past decade has shown that the study of human brain tissue is essential to increase our understanding of how the nervous system functions. Most recently, postmortem human brain research played a significant role in the development of a genetic test for Huntington’s disease and a treatment for Parkinson’s disease. Studies that focus on RLS have been delayed because of the lack of both an appropriate repository and tissue donors.
The Restless Legs Syndrome Foundation remedied the latter by establishing the RLS Foundation Brain Bank at the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center in 2000. A part of the Harvard University medical system, the Center (housed at McLean Hospital and commonly referred to as The Brain Bank) began in 1978 as a centralized resource for the collection and distribution of human brain specimens for research and diagnostic studies. Over the years, hundreds of scientists from the nation’s top research and medical centers have requested tissue from The Brain Bank for their investigations. Because most of these studies can be carried out on a very small amount of tissue, each donated brain provides a large number of samples for many researchers. For comparative purposes, brain tissue is needed from healthy individuals, as well as from those who had RLS. When possible, a small portion of frozen tissue taken from each brain donated to the RLS Foundation Collection will be kept available to serve as a resource for future genetic testing.
Steps to Request Tissue from the private RLS collection
1. Research scientist completes the RLS Foundation Brain Bank Tissue Request and submits it to research@rls.org.
2. Research scientist visits the Harvard Brain Bank Tissue Resource Center (HBTRC) website and clicks on the “Requesting Tissue” link on the left side of the homepage. From there, he/she must download the HBTRC Investigator Request Form.
3. Researcher must then submit tissue request to the HBTRC to determine if requested tissue is available.
4. Finally, the researcher must submit both the HBTRC Investigator Request Form and an RLS Foundation Brain Bank Tissue Request to the RLS Foundation via email (research@rls.org) or by mailing to:
RLS Foundation
Attn: Brain Bank
1530 Greenview Dr. SW,
Suite 210, Rochester, MN 55902
5. The RLS Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Board’s Tissue Request Committee will review the proposal and respond within 30 days.
Brain Bank Process Breakdown
The process of donating your brain to RLS research is broken down into 5 steps. To view these steps, please read our Process Steps in RLS Brain Tissue Collection.
To read about the process of donating brain tissue for research, visit our Brain Bank Tissue Donation page.
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