Netherlands Brain Bank for Psychiatry

Netherlands Brain Bank for Psychiatry

In 2012, the Netherlands Brain Bank (NBB)  launched a  psychiatric donor program (NBB-Psy), with the aim to increase the availability of brain material of donors with psychiatric diseases for scientific research. In collaboration with multiple Dutch UMC’s, NBB-PSY approached participants of clinical cohorts and patient societies with the request to consider brain donation.  The psychiatric donor program has led to a surge in registrations from donors with major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and control donors. By now, 30% of all registered donors have a psychiatric diagnosis (Fig. 1) and the number of NBB-PSY brain autopsies is increasing.  The NBB provides open access to brain samples, accompanied by detailed clinical and neuropathological information of the donors to researchers. Due to the short postmortem delay the samples are of excellent quality and fit for the newest high resolution omics techniques.

Research into psychiatric diseases

Recently, the NBB and its consortium partners started the 10-year Institute for Chemical Neuroscience (iCNS) Gravitation program.iCNS is an ambitious collaborative effort set up to unravel the cellular and molecular changes in brains in relation to psychiatric symptoms. The research program builds on the NBB collection, the psychiatric donor program and the Netherlands Neurogenomics Database (NND). The NND integrates standardized clinical, neuropathological and genetic information from nearly 3,000 NBB donors. In collaboration with the UMC Groningen, large language models were used to extract clinical signs and symptoms from NBB clinical files in multiple domains including psychiatric, cognitive, psychiatric, motor and sensory domains.1 Psychiatric symptoms entail agitation, restlessness, changed behavior/personality, changed moods or emotions, anxiety, depressed mood, aggressive behavior, compulsive behavior, manic, apathy. These data are accessible for researchers via an online repository. As a next step, neuropathological and genetic data will be integrated within this framework. The NND represents a unique resource that enables to perform cross-diagnostic research and is the basis for multi-omics data integration within iCNS. Main output of the iCNS program will be a molecular “brain atlas” of psychiatric symptoms.

Approach psychiatric donor program

The psychiatric donor program will continue as part of iCNS and the NBB’s focus areas. Within the program we will reach out to clinical study cohorts involved in NBB-PSY and we welcome collaboration with new cohorts, to increase the registration of clinically well characterized donors with a psychiatric diagnosis. Special focus will be on the recruitment of psychiatric elderly donors young control donors. Collaboration with psychiatrists within the consortium will support the characterization of donors and the establishment of a CSF biobank for translational research activities.

Keywords: Psychiatric brain donor program, molecular brain atlas of psychiatric symptoms, Netherlands Neurogenomics Database
 
List of disorders and domains: The regions available at the NBB cover all RDoC domains

References

1. Nienke J. Mekkes, Minke Groot, Eric Hoekstra, Alyse de Boer, Sander Bouwman, Sophie Wehrens, Megan K. Herbert, Dennis Wever, Netherlands Neurogenetics Database Consortium, Annemieke Rozemuller, Bart J.L. Eggen, Inge Huitinga, Inge R. Holtman. Natural language processing and modeling of clinical disease trajectories across brain disorders. Nat Med. 2024 Apr;30(4):1143-1153. doi: 10.1038/s41591-024-02843-9