The Sun Health Research Institute Brain Donation Program: description and experience, 1987-2007

Abstract

The Brain Donation Program at Sun Health Research Institute has been in continual operation since 1987, with over 1000 brains banked. The population studied primarily resides in the retirement communities of northwest metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona. The Institute is affiliated with Sun Health, a nonprofit community-owned and operated health care provider. Subjects are enrolled prospectively to allow standardized clinical assessments during life. Funding comes primarily from competitive grants. The Program has made short postmortem brain retrieval a priority, with a 2.75-h median postmortem interval for the entire collection. This maximizes the utility of the resource for molecular studies; frozen tissue from approximately 82% of all cases is suitable for RNA studies. Studies performed in-house have shown that, even with very short postmortem intervals, increasing delays in brain retrieval adversely affect RNA integrity and that cerebrospinal fluid pH increases with postmortem interval but does not predict tissue viability.

Fig. 1

Subject flow through the Brain Donation Program 01/01/01–12/31/06. Percentages are calculated with respect to total subject input

Fig. 2

Photomicrographs of 40 μm frozen sections stained according to our standard protocols. (a) Frontal lobe stained with H & E, showing periventricular white matter rarefaction; (b) hippocampus stained with the Campbell-Switzer silver method, showing senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles; (c) neurofibrillary tangles stained with the Gallyas silver method; (d) neuron in the dentate gyrus granular cell layer stained immunohistochemically for phosphorylated tau protein with the AT8 antibody; (e) tufted astrocyte stained with the Gallyas method; (f) thorned astrocyte stained with the Gallyas method; (g) oligodendroglial coiled body stained with the Gallyas method