CORE--NEUROPATHOLOGY AND BRAIN TUMOR BANK

Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston MA

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

DESCRIPTION: The core has two specific aims: 1) To provide a neuropathology core for use by investigators interested in neurogenetics research. The resources include neuropathological expertise as well as a nervous system tumor and tissue bank; the bank features frozen and fixed tissues, tumor cell lines, DNA and RNA extracts from tumors, and constitutional tissue and DNA from patients with inherited nervous system tumor syndromes (e.g., NF1, NF2, TS); and 2) To maintain a data base of human nervous system tumors which have been thoroughly and uniformly evaluated by a number of laboratory parameters, including histopathology, proliferation markers, and genetic analyses. This contributes to studies of molecular correlates of brain tumor prognosis in the inherited CNS tumor syndromes, NF1, NF2 and TS, as well as the same tumors occurring sporadically; 3) To characterize the cellular and subcellular localization of the NF2, TSC1 and TSC2 gene products, as well as their respective novel interacting proteins, in the normal adult and developing nervous system and in nervous system tumors; 4) To analyze human tissues from patients with NF2 and TS, as well as the corresponding sporadic tumors (e.g. meningiomas, schwannomas), to elucidate the molecular pathology underlying these conditions; and 5) to provide neuropathological expertise in the histological evaluation and image analysis of experimental gene therapy/gene delivery models as well as mouse models of tuberous sclerosis.