About Us
Recent advances using post mortem tissue gave impetus for the MS Society, MSRA and the NSW Government to support the setting up of a national brain bank specific for MS.
Professor Simon Hawke is director of the MSRA Brain Bank and Dr Teresa Wong is the project manager. MS Research Australia provides the MSRA Brain Bank with financial and day-to-day management support. Donations to the MSRA Brain Bank are most welcome and can be organised by calling MS Research Australia on 1300 672 265.
It would not be possible to retrieve the tissue around Australia, without being able to call on the resources of the Australian Brain Bank Network chaired by Professor Catriona McLean in Melbourne. The Australian Brain Bank Network is able to retrieve brains in each of the capital cities of Australia and it already has in place the procedures to do this rapidly after death.
Professor Hawke also chairs the MSRA Brain Bank’s Advisory Board that includes a Neuropathologist, a Researcher using the tissue, a Person with MS, and a Representative from MSRA and the MS Society. As tissue becomes available, we will keep you updated with progress reports.
To be successful, the MSRA Brain Bank needs to:
- Engage the MS community about what it means to donate their tissue after death.
- Develop the systems to retrieve the tissue as rapidly as possible after death, to stop the tissue from deteriorating.
- Confirm that the person actually had MS and of course didn’t have another neurological illness.
- Preserve the tissue in such a way as to allow its easy retrieval and so that it can be used in the widest range of scientific experiments.
- Characterise the brain tissue in terms of disease activity, train young researchers in these techniques and encourage/support them to follow a career in MS research.
Professor Simon Hawke, Director of the MSRA Brain Bank
Download the MSRA Brain BANK STATEMENT (Issue 1, December 2009)