Nursing homes and hospices

The Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson's Tissue Bank seeks to strengthen the relationship and collaboration between nursing homes, hospices and other healthcare organisations involved in the care of patients with Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's and other neurodegenerative conditions. We are hoping to encourage more people to become brain donors by providing information through healthcare providers, and we are especially looking to identify individuals with MS who are likely to follow a more aggressive and shorter disease course. 

If you are interested in collaboration with the brain bank, please contact us to organise an informative talk for your staff and interested patients at your location.

Cooperation and partnerships

Our recent liaison with large Parkinson's clinical cohort studies and clinical trials has increased recruitment of potential donors at the earliest possible stage after diagnosis. Through this route, we have also maximised the clinical information on each donation, as these donors have been followed more intensively by researchers and may have undergone brain imaging and donated samples for biobanking.

Currently, we are working with the following cohorts:

• PINE -  an observational study looking at the incidence of dementia in Parkinson's Disease, based in and around Aberdeen.
• PRoBaND - Parkinson's Repository of Biosamples and Network Datasets, also known as Tracking Parkinson's study, which aims to speed up our search for a cure by finding biomarkers.
• ICICLE-PD - Incidence of Cognitive Impairment in Cohorts with Longitudinal Evaluation - Parkinson's Disease, which aims to describe the frequency of mild cognitive impairment in Parkinson's disease in a cohort of newly diagnosed parkinsonism in Newcastle-Gateshead and Cambridgeshire.
• The DISCOVERY cohort, based in The Oxford Parkinson's Disease Centre (OPDC), is a research program funded by Parkinson's UK grant.  This project is studying more than 750 people in the early stages of Parkinson's alongside their siblings. The goals are to find new and better treatments for Parkinson's with fewer side effects and to develop simple ways to diagnose and monitor Parkinson's much more accurately.