BRAIN UK is co-ordinated from the University of Southampton. Initially started in 2009, a collaboration of James Nicoll, at the University of Southampton, and David Hilton, at Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust. The initiative was funded by the Medical Research Council, to access post-mortem cases. Thanks to the high level of co-operation of Neuropathologists throughout the UK, we could facilitate access to more than 100,000 archived post mortem cases from a wide range of neurological disorders.

Following on from this success, in April 2014, in collaboration with Kathreena Kurian, at University of Bristol, we extended the project to include details of tissue samples taken at operation from living patients (i.e. biopsies). This initiative was led by the brain tumour charity brainstrust and supported by a wider group of brain tumour charities including Charlie’s Challenge, Brain Tumour Research and umbrella group Sophie’s Wish.

To date, we could facilitate access to more than 450,000 archived biopsy cases from a wide range of neurological disorders, which are mostly, but not exclusively, tumour related. This will result in BRAIN UK becoming a very valuable resource for brain tumour research and investigation of other disorders not well represented in the post mortem archive.