Neurobiology Research Platform via MS Research Australia Brain Bank

Neurobiology Research Platform via MS Research Australia Brain Bank

Interview with Professor Simon Hawke, Director – MS Research Australia Brain Bank, Brain and Mind Institute, Sydney University

Transcript of Interview - Neurobiology Research Platform via MS Research Australia Brain Bank

WHY DO WE NEED AN MS BRAIN BANK?
The brain is obviously the key to Multiple Sclerosis. It doesn’t affect any other organ. And although for years while we’ve been understanding the pathology of the disease at a very unsophisticated level - just looking down microscopes at the material - we are now able to apply hugely powerful and quite comprehensive modern scientific techniques to give us the clues that will lead to hopefully a cure.

For those individuals in the early stages, I think that a lot of the fears of having this disease are mitigated to some degree by the optimism of better and better treatments. But for the person who has had the disease for a long time, and also for the 10% of people, the 1 in 10 who actually start off with a slowly progressing type of MS, which is a sizeable proportion, those people as yet don’t have the expectation of an effective treatment.

And this is why research into the disease, trying to understand the interaction between inflammation and the progression of the disease, trying to understand what mechanisms are in place with disease when it’s become progressive is absolutely vital.

We can’t do this in animal models, there is no animal model which models the progressive phase of MS. We have to study the brain tissue.

WHY SHOULD PEOPLE WITH MS CONSIDER DONATING THEIR BRAIN?
You will be donating your brain for other people with MS. You will be donating your brain so that scientists will be able to make the advances which build up a picture to give us some clues as to what is going on. Once we have done that then we will be in a much better position to start to develop treatments. I hope that people who just think well, will I do it or I won’t? I mean it’s a hard decision to decide to commit your brain for medical research. We don’t like to face the final outcome. We don’t like to think of ourselves in the situation where the disease has beaten us. Let’s face it. And it’s really only by making that commitment, by joining the Brain Bank, by signing up, and us removing your brain after death that we will be able to stop other people from being in the same situation that you are in.

WHAT RESULTS DO YOU EXPECT?
It will give us clues. It will give us a whole lot of paths to potentially follow. Whereas we have no clues really at the moment, this is the key thing. We don’t know what’s going on in chronic progressive MS. It’s not going to give us an immediate answer, but it will actually point the light down a whole lot of different pathways for us to then research. And this is why the brain tissue is at the centre. From the centre we will have all theses strands of research that will follow from the Brain Bank. For instance, where on a little chip which is about 3 centimetres by one and a half centimetres you can imprint all of the human genes. 30,000 human genes on this chip, and some with multiple spots for each gene. You can then determine which gene is unregulated and which gene is down regulated. That’s just one aspect of the sort of research that can be done. It’s going to be hugely exciting. It’s going to be a painstaking process, but it’s our refocusing our effort on the brain itself in MS that is going to give us the answers.

We have a commitment from well over 500 people with MS. That’s fantastic. We need a lot more. I think we would hope that we would be able to get over 1,000 people signed up by the end of the year. When we can start using the material for research? That depends on having probably having 10, 15 brains stored in the correct way. Furthermore, you have to compare it with brain tissue from people who don’t have MS. The key thing is that the brains will be removed in the same way. There is still an imperative to remove the brain rapidly after death and this effectively means you’re comparing apples with apples. And it’s only by doing that you can make sense of what is going on with the brain with patients who have MS.

We can only do this sort of very sophisticated research on very high quality material. So it’s a commitment from people with MS. It’s a commitment from their families and it’s actually having in place the mechanism to remove the brain very rapidly. If it could be done within an hour it would be better than if it was done within 12, or within 24 hours.

MS Research Australia prioritised the setting up of a Brain Bank several years ago in 2005. This came out of the need for scientists working on MS in Australia, and we do have some really world class scientists working on the disease here. They identified the lack of access to high quality brain material as being a real impediment to making the advances that we all need to understand this disease.

So MSRA has really driven this whole process. Without MSRA we wouldn’t have a Brain Bank. And the Brain Bank is now to be called the MS Research Australia Brain Bank in recognition of the commitment of MSRA to setting up and running the Brain Bank. It’s not just MSRA of course which are behind it, the NSW Government, the Office of Science and Medical Research has put in equal funding to set the Brain Bank up – which is fantastic – the University of Sydney has provided a commitment to allow laboratories and the offices of the Brain Bank to be set up in the Brain and Mind Research Institute. So there are a number of important partnerships which are in place.

The other crucial partnership of course is our partnership with the Australian Brain Bank Network. The network of Brain Bank’s that’s already set up. And it’s through the network that we retrieve the brain tissue. We maintain the close links with the donors; the network of course will just do the removal. Then of course we need to characterise the brain tissue within the Brain Bank, so we have a partnership with them. And of course, as I mentioned before, it’s the comparison of the brain tissue from people with MS with controlled brain tissue people who haven’t got a brain disease that’s crucial. And we have tremendous access for this material through the Using our Brains Program, and this material’s collected exactly the same way as the brain material from someone with MS.

So there are a number of key partnerships that allow us to overcome the huge geographical difficulties in Australia. I mean we need to have a program that works in Tasmania, and in each State in Australia. We are lucky to partner with the Australian Brain Bank network. But it wouldn’t be set up without the drive from Bill Carroll and other scientists and the support of MSRA. It wouldn’t have gotten off the ground.

There is cooperation however between the different Brain Banks. And there will be. I mean we don’t really view ourselves in Australia as being an isolated Brain Bank. If - based on previous experience - we can build and improve on the methods that we are using to preserve our material and have the best material, then that material will go out to any researcher around the world. We’re not just focused in Australia. We want the answers to MS as fast as possible and obviously anyone with MS would want the same. So it’s not just for Australian researchers. If we can get this material it will be a hugely valuable resource for scientists all over the world, not just in Australia.