Neurosurgery BRIDGE Biobank

The Neurosurgery Biospecimens Repository of Intraoperative Patient Donations to Foster Collaborations across the Globe and Enterprise (BRIDGE) serves as a conduit for the research activities of multiple laboratories across the Mayo Clinic enterprise and beyond. Over the course of Dr. Quinones-Hinojosa's research career, countless team members have helped with this effort to give patients hope.

The collaborative effort spans multiple departments at Mayo Clinic, successfully banking patient tissue donations with the help of outpatient clinical staff, the surgical team, pathology department, basic researchers, and the Biospecimens Accessioning and Processing Core.

The bank consists of cancerous and noncancerous tissue specimens from adult and pediatric patients, human mesenchymal stem cells obtained from adipose tissue, cerebrospinal fluid, spinal disc tissue, blood and astrocytes. These specimens are supplemented by a bank of postmortem brain tissue. So far, more than 12,150 intraoperative specimens have been collected from more than 875 patients. These serve as a driving force for translational research efforts. Every patient who donates to this bank, in essence, becomes part of the history to find a cure.

Using human tissue collected from patients is the closest scientists can come to performing in vivo human experiments. Maintaining the tissue bank is essential for such experiments. The Brain Tumor Stem Cell Research Laboratory has been able to foster collaborations with other academic institutions across the globe via this Neurosurgery BRIDGE.

Collecting intraoperative samples and maintaining the tissue bank allows Dr. Quinones-Hinojosa's research team to preserve tissue and cell cultures for use in present and future experiments. The team turns the cell cultures into established cell lines for use in the laboratory and by collaborators.