For each specimen and biobanking request, a service fee will be negotiated and charged to reflect a proportion of the costs associated with providing the specimens. The cost recovery fee is not for the specimen but for the specialized infrastructure and skilled labor required to make the precious specimen useful and accessible to all qualified researchers. As many other brain banks offer, these biobanking services are included below:

  • Labor and expertise to review the research requests, advice on cohort construction and cases best suited for research projects, correspondence, writing MTA draft
  • Consenting, coordination with donors, families, autopsy services, and funeral homes, autopsy reporting
  • Costs of body transportation between funeral homes and hospital
  • Costs of autopsy services for brain removal
  • Brochures & public outreach materials, websites, donor events, surveys, publications
  • Ethical approval for the use of post-mortem human tissue samples in research
  • Inventory adjustment, tissue request recording, payment recording
  • Process the Material Transfer Agreement through our administrative and legal departments
  • Operations of a Biosafety Level 2 (BSL-2) facility and maintaining access to a Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) facility
  • Storing the available human specimens and research registries in complex databases
  • Process of de-identification and data retrieval
  • Tissue sampling and storage: biosafety cabinets, freezers (-20° and -80°), refrigerators, 24/7 fridge/freezer temperature monitoring system, walk-in cold rooms, entrance control system
  • Preparation of microscope slides from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded, or frozen blocks with cryostat or microtome sectioning
  • Aliquotting of fluid and tissue samples with centrifuges and incubators
  • Designated and potentially infectious instruments to dissect frozen or formalin-fixed regions of interest from existing archival tissue, and preparation of tissue homogenates,
  • Personal protective equipment of lab coats, gloves, eye protection, face shields, and more for potentially infectious human specimens
  • Professional training for dedicated core scientists and staff,  such as conferences and membership to stay current with biobanking technology development
  • Preparation of samples for dispatch to research groups and specialized consumables: histological slides, slide boxes, bags, tubes, shipping labels, packing containers, dry ice

If you need human specimens at no cost or for large-scale studies, please contact NIH NeuroBioBank. The NIH NeuroBioBank is supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the National Institute on Aging (NIA), and the National Institute on Drug Abuse  (NIDA).

Interested in how brain banks work? Here are some references: 

Brain Banking for Research into Neurodegenerative Disorders and Ageing. Shepherd CE, Alvendia H, Halliday GM. Neurosci Bull. 2019. 35:283-288. PMID: 30604281; PMCID: PMC6426907. (link)

Brain Bank Protocol for Collecting, Processing and Characterizing Aging Brains. Poloni TE,  et al., J Vis Exp. 2020. 3;(160). PMID: 32568219. (link)

Biovalue in Human Brain Banking: Applications and Challenges for Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases. Vedam-Mai V.  Methods Mol Biol. 2022;2389:209-220. PMID: 34558013. (link)

A new viewpoint: running a nonprofit brain bank as a business. Rademaker SHM, Huitinga I. Handb Clin Neurol. 2018;150:93-101. PMID: 29496158. (link)