Brain banking for research: can we achieve efficient banking?

For many years, clinical and surgical pathologists have searched for explanations as to why human tissue is altered, why mass lesions are observed or why the function of an organ is disrupted. One way to answer these questions has been to assess tissue with the naked eye and/or using light- or electron-microscopes, and to compare what is seen in the lesioned tissue with what is seen in normal tissue. Lesions have then been described and named primarily by clinical and surgical pathologists. The practice of sampling tissue for assessment has led to the creation of biobanks-archives of tissue samples that have been analysed and stored for future use. With appropriate ethical approval, these tissue archives have been used extensively for research; over the past decades, our knowledge of various tissue alterations has increased almost exponentially. Below, we have briefly summarised some aspects of work carried out in the field of pathology and its limitations, with particular emphasis on brain pathology.