Sheffield Brain Tissue Bank

The Sheffield Brain Tissue Bank (SBTB) is operated by staff within the Department of Neurosciences and is housed within the Sheffield Biorepsoitory at the University of Sheffield. SBTB consists of two cohorts of central nervous system tissue from autopsy donations. The first is a local donor cohort of brain and spinal cord tissues from patients with Motor Neurone Disease, Parkinson's Disease,and Dementias. This tissue is a central resource for Sheffield based neuroscience research into these disorders but is also available to external collaborators. Enquiries from prospective users should be directed via a member of staff of the Department of Neurosciences. This component of SBTB has current ethical approval as a Research Tissue Bank. This arrangement includes the possibility of accessing tissues for research from the Bank without the requirement for full external REC review of the project if the proposed research falls into previously agreed parameters regarding the nature of the investigation and the technical methods that will be used.


The second cohort is the Medical Research Council's Cognitive Function & Ageing Study (CFAS)brain donor cohor. CfAS has had a brain donation programme since
1993 and has accumulated >540 donations. Sheffield is the lead neurpathology centre for the study and holds tissue from each participating centre for long term archiving to facilitate administration of tissue requests and tissue distribution to component projects. CFAS is also open to new collaborations and investigators who are able to propose studies that exploit the unique population base of the cohort. A link is provided to the CFAS website. CFAS is in the process of applying for Research Tissue Bank ethical approval status.

The Sheffield Biorepository which houses the SBTB collections is a Human Tissue Authority licensed facility and was favourably inspected by the Human Tissue Authority in July 2010.