Tissue

Premortem Information- What is available?

The following tests and examinations are performed on each subject at each visit (but may be abbreviated in very ill subjects).

1. A medical history, including AIDS related illnesses and use of antiretroviral medications.
2. Serial neurological examinations conducted by academic neurologists with extensive experience treating AIDS patients, resulting in an AAN diagnosis.
3. Serial neuropsychological tests designed to detect and characterize eash subject's cognitive function.
4. The PRISM, a questionnaire designed to characterize drug use/dependence and psychiatric illness.
5. Urine screening for drugs of abuse at time of neuropsychological testing.
6. Plasma, HIV RNA viral load, T-cell subsets, and at each visit serum/plasma/PBMCs for storage.
7. Optional lumbar puncture for CSF viral load and storage of CSF.

Rapid Tissue Harvesting

After death, the brain spinal cord and other tissues are quickly removed (average autolysis time approximately 6 hrs) and half of each sample is frozen and stored at –80 degrees centigrade, and the other half stored in formalin fixative. A pathologist examines slides from the systemic tissues to make diagnoses on these tissues. A neuropathologist examines the CNS tissues.

What tissue is available?

The NNAB has available for researchers, free of charge (except for shipping costs), the following tissues and fluids:

1. Brain and spinal cord, frozen or fixed in formalin. Unstained recuts of paraffin- embedded, formalin-fixed tissue are also available.
2. Variety of systemic tissues, including lymph nodes, spleen, liver, heart and lungs, and most major organs, including frozen, fixed or paraffin sectioned samples.
3. Blood (serum, plasma, and PBMC), some urine, and and CSF.
4. CNS and other tissues from HIV- seronegative control subjects, most with other neurological illnesses.

How do I access the samples?

These tissues and fluids along with the results of the examinations and tests described above are available upon approval of the researchers request. A tissue request form is available on this web site. For larger or more complex requests, we suggest you contact the NNTC National Coordinating Office. You will be requested to submit paperwork including:

1. The type and quantity of tissue desired, the clinical information needed, and to specify how the tissue should be prepared (e.g, fixed or frozen). NNAB reserves the right to refuse requests that, in our opinion, ask for excessively large amounts of tissue or which deplete small structures (such as the thymus or basal ganglia), would require us to destroy a larger structure to remove a smaller one, or request processing techniques that are not routinely performed in our lab.

2. A copy of your NIH Biosketch and information about your academic affiliation.
3. A brief outline of the study you wish to perform. NNAB reserves the right to refuse tissue for any proposal that, in our opinion, lacks scientific merit. Less stringent scientific scrutiny is needed for very small orders (3-5 samples) used to validate techniques or to be used as pilot data.

4. A copy of your current IRB approval or exemption for the proposed study.
5. Copy of your institutional approval and an address/telephone number where this information can be verified.
6. Signed form that you have been adequately trained to handle biohazardous or infectious tissues and that you are willing to assume sole responsibility for any occurrences resulting from our tissue.
7. NNAB must be credited in any presentations or publications that use any of our tissue or data (ref: NS-38841).

Download the Tissue Request Form Please download the tissue request form (233 KB) in PDF format and fax it back at: (310) 473-7772. You will need to unzip the file before it can be viewed.