Media Contact: Nancy Stringer (619) 543-6163, nstringer@ucsd.edu

UCSD ESTABLISHES TISSUE BANK
FOR NEURO-AIDS RESEARCH

 As part of a national effort to speed progress in the scientific understanding and treatment of neurological damage from AIDS, researchers at University of California, San Diego, in collaboration with scientists at University of Southern California and UCLA, are establishing a tissue bank of brain and other neurological tissue from AIDS patients following death. Patients in the advanced stages of the disease who want to participate will undergo neurological and neuropsychological testing and assessment every six months, and will be asked to consent to an autopsy should they die while on the study.

The California Neuro-AIDS Tissue Network (CNTN), made possible through a 5-year, $5 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, is the first effort to link important clinical information with tissue samples for research.

"A great deal can be learned by studying these tissues, particularly when they are coupled with specific, detailed clinical information gathered prior to death," said CNTN director Igor Grant, M.D., professor of psychiatry with the UCSD School of Medicine. "We hope, through this new resource, to make more rapid progress in our understanding of the neurological effects of AIDS and that this new knowledge will lead to better therapies." Grant said new research may help answer critical questions such as:

Is the virus in the central nervous system different than that in other tissues?
Because of the brain’s protective barrier, does it provide a sanctuary for HIV?
What types of injury occur in the brain? What cells or parts of cells are damaged?
What are the best approaches to protect the brain from damage?  

The information and tissue samples will be available to AIDS researchers nationwide who have submitted a research protocol that has been reviewed and approved by the CNTN Operations Oversight Committee.

The CNTN, which is based at UCSD Medical Center, Hillcrest, is a collaborative effort of UCSD’s HIV Neurobehavioral Research Center, Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center, and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (affiliated with UCLA). Together these institutions provide care to approximately 4,000 patients with AIDS. CNTN researchers say they hope to have 200 participants at any given time.

To be eligible to participate, volunteers must have a diagnosis of AIDS with a CD4 cell count of less than 50. Participants will receive complete medical and neurological examinations, and will undergo tests for memory, attention and other cognitive abilities. They will also be asked to donate samples of blood and cerebrospinal fluid. All results will be available to the participant and his or her primary physician.

For further information, call the CNTN at (619) 543-8090, or visit the California Neuro-AIDS Tissue Network Web site: http://www.cntn.ucsd.edu.

Others involved in the CNTN Coordinating Center at UCSD are: J. Allen McCutchan, M.D., professor of medicine (co-director of the center and principal investigator of the UCSD site); Eliezer Masliah, M.D., professor of neurosciences and pathology (director of the tissue bank); Ronald Ellis, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of neurosciences (director of the protocol monitoring unit); and Dan Masys, M.D., associate clinical professor of medicine (director of the data coordinating unit). Principal investigator of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center site is Eric Daar, M.D., assistant professor of medicine at UCLA; and Peter Heseltine, M.D., professor of medicine at USC, is principal investigator of the LA County+USC Medical Center site.

Three other tissue banks have been established across the nation with funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.