Brain bank in Colorado helps find cure for multiple sclerosis -- find out how to donate here

Researchers open brain bank original report Dave Young; KDVR-TV

The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus has what they call a "brain bank".

It's a unique "bank" that holds donated brain tissues from around the world and it's located in Colorado, which has been shown as having one of the highest multiple sclerosis (MS) rates in the United States.

A resident of Colorado, Leslie Kane, pledged to donate her brain and spinal cord tissues to the "brain bank".   "It's a gift that's infinite," said Kane. "There may be someone, someday, a student who learns something from the brain that you donate. Or there may be someone ten years from now that learns something from your gift.""It's a gift that's infinite," said Kane. "There may be someone, someday, a student who learns something from the brain that you donate. Or there may be someone ten years from now that learns something from your gift," Kane says.

Sierra Blankenship, from here in Lima, Ohio, has said she really wants to know who to contact so that she can do this too.  "I already have the rest of my body being donated to people who will need them, but never in a million years did I think something like this exhisted," she said.  "I was going to look into some sort of donation for science and whatnot, but this sounds so much better to me."

Researchers have noted the freezers in one building hold 350 samples of both normal and MS-infected brain tissue and will soon carry the largest collection of brain tissue donated by MS patients in the world.  They expect to expand to around a thousand samples shortly.

Dr. John Corby, who is a CU researcher and the director of the "brain bank", says there is no substitue for actual human tissue.  "Because we learn a lot about the actual disease process itself in the human organism and there's just no substitute for that."

And Karen Wenzel, the excutive director of the Rocky Mountain MS Center, says, "The most valuable brain tissue is that which we can retrieve very quickly and prepare. That's what researchers find the most valuable so if people in Colorado, where there is a high incidence rate, choose to participate in this research it's very valuable for researchers all around the world."

It is noted that over the past few years, researchers all over the world, have used these tisuues preserved at the CU "brain bank",  and have published very promising work on multiple sclerosis to date.

The National MS Society funds a lot of the $2,000 cost per single brain processing research.