Douglas-Bell Canada Brain Bank, an essential platform for brain research in Canada

The Douglas-Bell Canada Brain Bank (DBCBB) houses and manages over 3,000 brains, as well as a large relational database containing demographic, clinical and developmental histories from the donors. The DBCBB is one of the rare brain banks in the world to collect brains from people who suffered from diverse mental disorders, including schizophrenia, major depression, bipolar disorder, and substance use disorders, as well as brains from individuals who were affected with different neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease), Alzheimer's disease, and other dementias. In Canada, the DBCBB is the only resource to offer such a variety of well-characterized samples. The DBCBB receives a large number of tissue requests, and regularly sends samples to researchers around the world. Its uniqueness and importance to the international neuroscience community is attested by the more than 1,000 brain samples the bank staff dissects and ships yearly providing access to well-characterized human brain samples to many researchers in Canada and around the world. Although the DBCBB has been in operation for over 30 years and provides high quality tissue to a large community of neuroscientists, its infrastructure is outdated. In particular, it lacks essential equipment to streamline its operations, which limits its capacity to render services more efficient and to reduce wait times to receive samples. The Platform grant will provide the necessary funds to purchase essential sample processing equipment, and to hire specialized personnel who will implement a new database and operating procedures that will significantly accelerate the preparation of human brain samples for research