Breadcrumb
- Home
- Specimen request
BioBanking
A brain donation is a truly invaluable gift, and we are profoundly grateful to all the donors and their families who contribute to advancing brain research through the Iowa NeuroBank Core.
As a non-profit university research facility, we specialize in providing human specimens to help researchers investigate the origins and progression of brain diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease.
Currently, our focus is on managing and distributing human tissue to support academic research locally, nationally, and globally, alongside collecting blood samples for clinical trials. Your generous contributions are driving significant, positive changes in diagnosis, research, education, and treatment. We invite you to explore our publications and learn more about the impact of your support.
Diagnostics:
Many brain disorders (such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease) can only be diagnosed with certainty by examining the brain after death. Some psychiatric diseases can also cause identifiable changes in the brain. Even in diseases that can be confirmed by genetic or another testing, examination of brain tissue can reveal additional diseases or unexpected effects of a known disease.
Research and Education:
While substantial progress has been made in understanding these disorders with animal models, there are still many unanswered questions to be addressed in human brains. The limited supply of donated tissues is a barrier to progress in understanding these human brain disorders.
Therapeutic and Technology Development:
By increasing the amount of tissue available for research, researchers will be able to support biotech and pharmaceutical discovery to better understand how to prevent, diagnose, treat and cure human brain disorders.