Topics and Aims of the Meeting

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China has a population over 1.3 billion, which is rapidly aging. Age-related disorders, including neurodegenerative diseases, are becoming one of the greatest medical and socioeconomic challenges in China. A great deal of effort is required to meet the forthcoming crises in an aging Chinese society, including by promoting basic and clinical research, drug development and reforming the healthcare system for the neurological diseases.

Much of the mechanism underlying neurodegenerative diseases remains unclear to date. Studying postmortem human brains from diseased subjects can provide crucial information for understanding brain aging and diseases. Human brain banking is well-established in developed countries and is essential to elucidate the mechanism of brain diseases for effective prevention and treatment. In contrast, there are only a few brain banking sites currently being operated in China. Indeed, scholarly data from Chinese human brains are rare. It is known that racial, epigenetic, environmental, socioeconomic and lifestyle variables all play a role in the development of many brain disorders. A weak brain banking system is an obvious bottleneck for basic and clinical research towards effective intervention of brain disorders among Chinese people―establishing internationally standardized human brain banking system in China is in urgent need.

Xiangya School of Medicine (XYSM) and Peking-Union Medical College (PUMC) are two of the first established modern medical institutes in China. Willed body donation program has been a long-standing supporting system for teaching anatomical sciences in both schools, which includes collection of brains in some cases. Recently, human brain banking is considered as a priority to develop in order to promote scientific research and collaboration on neurological diseases in China and internationally. Therein, a joint XYSM-PUMC Human Brain Banking Consortium has been set up, supported by the existing strength of the willed body donation system as well as active research programs in the two historically-tired medical schools in China.

To foster human brain banking and research in neurological diseases in China, we plan to hold an international workshop in the Spring (April) of 2014 in Changsha, the capital city of Hunan and a satellite workshop in Beijing. The meetings will be jointly organized by the two schools, via the operation by the XYSM-PUMC Human Brain Banking Consortium. Four international experts specialized in human brain banking and neurological disease research from the United States, Europe and Australia are invited to give keynote presentations, as are several distinguished neuroscientists inside mainland China. They will provide the latest advances in human brain banking technology and utility, and in research of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease. Topics also include current status of human brain banking at XYSM, PUMC and other representative institutions in China, strategic discussion to promote a national network in China (including administrative, ethic, legal, educational, financial, infrastructural issues about human banking). Basic and clinical neuroscientists and neuropathologists from Changsha and other cities will be invited to attend the meeting and/or present scientific data at the meeting. This workshop will accomplish the following goals:

• To promote internationally standardized human brain banking practice in China.
• To provide a platform for information exchange among different brain banks across China.
• To develop a work plan for integration of brain banking in China with international counterparts.
• To provide comprehensive personnel training on brain banking protocols and management.
• To facilitate scholarly exchanges in research of neurodegenerative diseases.