Monkey Alcohol Tissue Research Resource (MATRR)

Oregon Health & Science University, Portland OR

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY The “Monkey Alcohol Tissue Research Resource” (MATRR) is an MPI research resource grant awarded to Oregon Health & Science University and Baylor University. Importantly, the MATRR provides an opportunity for laboratories with specific expertise in organ pathology, neuroscience and genomics the ability to extend their research to a primate model with similar genetics, developmental processes, endocrinology, immunology, physiology and neuroanatomy to humans. Thus, the MATRR is unique to the alcohol research field in promoting a translational resource for mechanistic studies of alcohol-induced pathologies. The MATRR has been highly successful in providing the alcohol research community access to tissue and data generated from cohorts of monkeys that have completed a standard protocol to study voluntary alcohol self-administration. The MATRR bioinformatics has established reliable, robust categories of drinking that encompass low, binge, heavy and very heavy chronic intake patterns. The necropsy procedure is fully refined and allows for the highest quality harvesting of all organs and tissues in the body. The procedure results in a wide distribution of ethanol intakes (g/kg), clinical chemistry, functional brain images, genomics and cognitive behavior through a dedicated web resource. MATRR users are routinely contacted for custom tissue preparations in addition to the frozen and fixed tissue banked in the MATRR until requested. All tissues are accompanied by data on organismal and alcohol intake variables to aid in rapid publication of findings. The MATRR resource has exceeded all expectations in terms of tissue generation, inventory control, tissue requests, tissue utilization, data analytics, novel data generated, publications, newly funded projects and new research directions. In this renewal, we propose to add more cohorts from currently funded and proposed studies, for example, infant tissue from a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) model and additional cohorts following shorter alcohol drinking (6 months) to complement the longer term (12 months) and repeated abstinence protocols. The inventory control is aided by a unique web-based interface that also serves to administratively evaluate and act upon tissue requests. In total, we have 291 registered users and have shipped over 5,285 tissue samples from 6,315 tissue and data requests. With each accepted request, an MTA is filed, and timely progress reports are automatically requested. In the past funding, the resource has been extremely successful in the number of publications (31 in 48 months) from 14 different laboratories at 11 unique universities or institutes. There remain great opportunities to further build and refine this resource. Our goal is to have the MATRR bioinformatics integrate data across disciplines, organs and individuals to generate new knowledge of chronic alcohol use disorders. There is also opportunity to study additional tissue (infant), variations in the protocol (brain biopsies) and additional datasets (cognitive assessments).