About Us
The MSRA Brain Bank is an Australia-wide facility, set up in February 2008 as a joint venture between MS Research Australia and the University of Sydney, to collect, store, and distribute high quality and well-characterised human post mortem MS tissue to scientists around the world for finding the cause and a cure for MS.
Professor Simon Hawke is the Director of the MSRA Brain Bank and 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.
Dr Teresa Wong joined as Project Manager of the MSRA Brain Bank in May 2009.
It would not be possible to retrieve MS 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.
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.
As of March 2010, 17 MS brains have been donated to the MSRA Brain Bank, and over 400 people with MS are consented Brain Donors.
Please register today to receive your information and consent pack!
Professor Simon Hawke, Director of the MSRA Brain Bank
Download the MSRA Brain BANK STATEMENT (Issue 1, December 2009)
Download the Slides from MSRA Brain Bank Information Seminar (NSW/ACT/TAS, March 2010)
Download the Slides from MSRA Brain Bank Information Seminar (VIC, August 2010)