Background
Our brains need a consistent supply of blood in order to work. However, this blood supply can be affected by a disease called cerebral small vessel disease (SVD). SVD damages the deeper parts of the brain known as the white matter.
This white matter damage can be seen on brain scans and is very common. It is seen in almost half of all people with dementia. However, it is also seen in people who have other conditions including stroke and depression. It's also seen with ageing in people who don't have obvious thinking and memory problems.
Other animals do not develop SVD, though it is possible to genetically modify an animal to develop some aspects of SVD so they can then be studied. However, this doesn't give us the the whole picture. To fully understand why and how SVD damages the human brain, we need to look at the brains of people at different stages of being affected by SVD.
What is the research aiming to do?
The aim of this research programme is to develop a human brain bank to support biomedical research into the pathophysiology of human SVD that may be used nationally and internationally.
The programme will have access to information from several clinical cohorts of patients who have donated their brains after their death. However, simply having access to brain tissue after death is not sufficient to achieve these goals.
Professor Smith and his team will therefore develop a brain bank which links together brains from donors and their lifelong medical records. This will mean that researchers can study not only the brain tissue but also the risk factors the donors experienced, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, or smoking. They also want to link brain donations with medical investigations that donors have had during the course of their lives, like brain scans and blood tests.
As the access to patient data is very tightly controlled, this data needs to be stored in a secured site, known as a ‘data safe-haven’, and accessed only by authorised individuals. Researchers accessing the brain bank will need to access brain tissue alongside information about risk factors and other medical information. This will be done in a confidential way so that the researcher cannot work out the identity of the donor from the information provided.
What difference could this research make?
The programme should be able to offer research groups around the world access to brain tissue and medical information that makes it easier to investigate SVD and understand its links to clotting strokes, bleeding strokes, brain haemorrhages, and thinking and memory problems.
Professor Colin Smith was awarded the 'Stroke Association & Medical Research Council Priority Programme Award' in 2017. Colin is pictured below (centre) receiving his award from Lady Estelle Wolfson and Professor Sir Mark Walport at our 2018 Keynote Lecture.
