Chris Daniels
Canada's only national brain bank is "functioning at 50 per cent capacity right now", says the medical director of the bank.
Because of the recession and provincial cuts to research agencies, the bank went from collecting 120 brains a year to 60, director Dr. John Wherrett said of Canada's largest provider of brain tissues.
For fifteen years, the brain bank at the Toronto General Hospital, Western Division, has provided researchers brain tissue for studying neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and Parkinson's Disease.
But for the last few years, the bank has been experiencing growing pains. Its main sources of income, the Medical Research Council, voluntary agencies, and the Ontario Mental Health board, had to reduce their commitment because of difficulty raising funds. This lack of funding has left the bank with fewer tissues for researchers and, without diseased tissues as well as controls for the studies, research has been moving more slowly, said Dr. Wherrett.
"We've had to pick and choose what we do," he said. "There has been a slow down in research in recent years because of massive cutbacks on top of the recession."
It's a trend he thinks will soon change.
