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GRANT AWARDED
Professor Harper, in the Department of Pathology at the University of Sydney, has been awarded a grant of Aus$1.2 million from one of the US National Institutes of Health (the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism). The focus of the research will be the effects of alcoholism and poor nutrition on the human brain.
The large grant reflects the international standing of the Neuropathology Unit which has grown steadily since Professor Clive Harper arrived from Perth to take up the Foundation Chair of Neuropathology in 1985. From that time their group began to develop what is known as a "brain bank" or "tissue resource centre" which is one of six in Australia. These banks tend to specialise in particular diseases and yet they collaborate, sharing tissue for particular studies. "We have recently sent material to groups in Western Australia, Queensland, Montreal and Belgium," Professor Harper said.
Professor Harper collaborates with a number of groups in Australia and overseas and is a member of the Board of the International Society for Biomedical Research in Alcoholism.
There are currently over 500 specimens held in freezers at –80†C at the University of Sydney, with about 30 cases added each year.
Researchers compile detailed information about the medical history of each donor, and additional information is available from the study of tissue samples under the microscope. "The real benefits of brain banks relate to the fantastic advances in molecular biology and new methods for studying these samples. We can actually extract DNA from the tissues".
"The Americans have decided to fund our Tissue Resource Centre because we are probably the leading authority in the world on the structural changes of the human brain caused by alcohol".
"We were the first to document that there is actually nerve cell loss in the brains of alcoholics, and the importance of the associated nutritional deficiencies, particularly of thiamin."
This research helped to convince the Government to require that thiamin be added to bread from 1991. In 1997 we repeated our earlier studies and found that the incidence of the Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome (a devastating brain disease caused by thiamin deficiency) had already dropped by 100 to 200 per cent".
"Through our Tissue Resource Centre we have formed links with groups in the US to do collaborative studies, including genetic studies. They will be looking for the genetic basis of alcoholism and the genetic and chemical changes occurring in the brain caused by alcoholism."
The Centre is also funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council and is part of a national network of brain banks established about fourteen years ago to allow investigation into mental disorders.
Another major contributor is the Schizophrenia Research Institute (formerly NISAD) which has also developed a valuable long-term brain donor program, 'Gift of Hope' which works in conjunction with the 'Using our Brains' (controls) donor program. Each donor is assessed by a clinician, then donate their brains after death.
Professor Harper states the obvious when he says: "To do our studies we need to collect normal as well as diseased human brains. Before material is placed in the Centre we ensure that we have the permission of the relatives of the deceased. We explain that the tissues are going to be useful for studies for the betterment of mankind".
"I am very excited about this new grant. We will appoint four new staff members to help run the bank and we can afford to buy some essential technical equipment".
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