Tissue Bank’s Second Anniversary

The UK PDS Tissue Bank at Imperial has recently, in mid-August, celebrated its second anniversary of full operation. The first two years have been an exciting and challenging time for the staff at the Tissue Bank. The progress over the past two years has been extremely encouraging and the Tissue Bank continues to play an important role in research into Parkinson’s.

We have continued to work hard at increasing the numbers of potential donors registered with the Tissue Bank

In 2003 we had an average of 11 registrations of prospective donors per month. In 2004, our average registration is up to 20 per month.

The number of potential donors registered with the Tissue Bank currently stands at 581. Of the donors that have registered with us we have had 71 tissue donations. These donations are vital to further research into Parkinson’s and related disorders. However, for every 20 Parkinson's brains we collect we only receive 1 brain donation from a healthy person. These healthy brains are also vital for research since scientists need to understand how the healthy brain functions and compare it to research results from Parkinson's brain tissue.

The work of the Tissue Bank and research on the tissue collected has been presented in talks to a large number of PDS branches and in a number of articles on Parkinson’s. In addition we have published and distributed our first two newsletters to registered potential donors, their next-of-kin, GPs, and mortuary staff who have helped us collect tissue etc. The newsletters have been a great success, with many people writing to say that they welcome the contact with the Tissue Bank and that the articles contained in the newsletter are interesting and informative. Please let us know if there are any issues you would like to be addressed in our newsletter.

We have also held annual open days with talks about the workings of the Tissue Bank and research projects using the donated tissue, along with a guided tour of the Tissue Bank. These have proved to be highly successful.

• Many thanks to the Durham Branch of the PDS for their very generous donation in memory of Mr & Mrs Wilkinson.

• If there are any families or husband and wives who are registered with us that would like to help us and the PDS with some publicity, please could you get in touch with us.

• We would also like to thank those of you who wrote in with suggestions for the name of the newsletter. We hope that you all like the chosen name.

• Thank you to everybody who made contributions to the Newsletter.

• We would also like to thank our On-Call staff for all their help and hard work throughout the year.