The UK Multiple Sclerosis Tissue Bank

The UK Multiple SclerosisTissue Bank
Welcome Introduction How to register as a tissue donor Raising awareness of all those affected by MS Donation of Tissue Requesting tissue for research on multiple sclerosis Promoting the Tissue Bank in the research community The Bank Statement Issue One Issue Two Issue Three Articles MS Matters Insight - Banking on the future MS Frontiers - A very special bank MS Frontiers - Making a very special contribution Links: Department of Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience Department of Neuropathology Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain and Northern Ireland International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies E-mail: ukmstissuebank@imperial.ac.uk	the Bank Statement Issue Two (The Bank Statement is also available as a PDF document.) Obligation to donors Although the Tissue Bank has been set-up to help us gain a better understanding of MS irrespective of where the studies are being carried out, we believe we have an obligation to support research in the country where our donors were resident. The pie chart on the left below shows that three quarters of the 57 projects supported by the Tissue Bank are being carried out in the UK. Supporting the whole spectrum of MS research The 57 projects cover the whole spectrum of research on multiple sclerosis: including diagnosis; earliest changes within a lesion; chemical messengers that drive the immune system; factors that damage myelin and nerve fibres (axons); and, remyelination. The pie chart on the right below shows how the 57 projects are on the whole evenly distributed into these 6 categories. We have selected a project from each of the six areas to give you an idea of the type of research that the Tissue Bank is supporting. A Resource for Research As well as raising the awareness of the MS community to our work, we have also been promoting the Tissue Bank as a “Resource for Research” in the scientific community. As a result of these promotional exercises and the high quality of service that we offer to researchers, the number of studies that the Tissue Bank supports has steady grown as seen in the graph below. We are now providing tissue and/or cerebrospinal fluid samples to 57 different projects. 1. Diagnosis: Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to find out what is happening within MS lesions Professor David Miller - MS Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Research Unit at Queen Square, London. Lesions within the brain and spinal cord (central nervous system – CNS) of people living with MS have one or a number of features, for example: myelin destruction (demyelination), new myelin formation (remyelination) or a loss of the nerve fibres that are normally enveloped by the myelin (axonal loss). These different facets of the lesion can be clearly seen in tissue samples removed from the brain after death; but, is it possible to detect them in a person living with the condition? The NMR Research Unit is trying to find a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique that will do just that. Over the last six years the NMR Unit has been supplied with brain slices from over 50 MS patients and 2 individuals without MS. The brain slices are scanned using a number of MRI techniques and areas that have “lit up” on the scan are dissected out, stained and examined under a microscope. The microscopic features (demyelination, remyelination, axonal loss) of the lesion are then related to the MR images obtained of the brain slice. The picture on the left shows a slice of half a brain. An MR scan of the slice (lesions appear as white patches) is shown in the second panel. The three arrows indicate lesions that were later dissected out; their appearance under a microscope is shown in the three smaller pictures on the far right. This project aims to extend the use of MRI beyond diagnosis by finding out which imaging techniques are best for studying the effect that MS therapies have upon lesions in a person living with MS. A number of techniques in this ongoing study are already showing promise including “magnetisation transfer (MT)” MRI. This technique has already been used to show that beta-Interferon promotes lesion recovery in people with relapsing-remitting MS. page 3 page 1/ page 2/ page 3/ page 4/ page 5/ page 6/
	The UK Multiple Sclerosis Tissue Bank Division of Neuroscience and Mental Health Imperial College London Charing Cross Campus Fulham Palace Road London W6 8RF Tel: 020 8846 7324 Fax: 020 8846 7500 E-mail: ukmstissuebank@imperial.ac.uk
*The UK Multiple Sclerosis Tissue Bank is funded by the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, registered charity 207495.*