In the Finnish city of Kuopio, neurosurgeons collaborate with neurophysiologists and molecular and cellular biologists to make frontal cortex, dura, intraventricular CSF, skin, fat, and other tissue from hydrocephalus patients available for research purposes. Being in their 60s to 80s, half of these patients have preclinical ADRD pathology; some carry ADRD gene variants. The Kuopio biopsy sampling protocol improves patient care and fuels research studies in Europe and the U.S.
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Kuopio Hydrocephalus Shunt Biopsy Protocol
Fresh Brain Every Friday: Biopsies Transform Alzheimer's Science
Heads up, Alzheimerologists around the world. This serialized report from Kuopio, a small Finnish city close to the Russian border, is well worth considering. It is a story about how tight—sometimes minute-by-minute—integration between medicin...
A Day's Work: Cortex Biopsy Comes Out. Shunt Goes In. Patient Goes Home.
It's 7:30 a.m. and Kuopio University Hospital is humming. On the second floor, neurosurgeons are easing into their day with a team discussion of ventriculo-peritoneal shunting, while next door, a woman in her 70s is being readied to go under the k...
Brain Tissue From Living People with Amyloid Plaques Can Fire in a Dish
What little scientists know about how human neurons function in vivo comes from resections of brain tissue in people with cancer or intractable epilepsy. Scientists slice these biopsies, keep the slices viable for the day, and characterize the mor...
Cortical Biopsies Hint at Start of Alzheimer's 'Cellular Phase'
What goes on inside the brain of a person in the preclinical stages of Alzheimer’s disease? Science grapples with this question by studying postmortem tissue, despite concerns about agonal changes and postmortem interval degrading sample quality...
Brain Biopsies and FinnGen Form Wellspring for Functional Genomics
Tucked into the waterways of a Nordic landscape, moose roaming its woods near the Russian border, Kuopio, population 300,000, is both small and remote. Yet this Finnish city lies in the center of a new approach to functional genomics and personali...