A Growing Need for Tissue
The need for human tissue continues to grow apace. Over 80 percent of NDRI’s researchers report a need for more tissues for their studies. Increasingly, the demand is for specialized normal and diseased tissues that are particularly difficult to procure . There is also a very significant trend towards a need for tissues suitable for molecular investigation, such as proteomics and nucleic acid analyses. This creates considerable challenges and requires a paradigm shift in the tissue procurement models currently employed.
NDRI Special Initiatives
Rare Disease Initiative
The Rare Disease Initiative explores new ways to help scientists find human biomaterials to better understand and treat “orphan” or rare diseases.
Recovery Partner Network
By becoming a recovery partner, you will be instrumental in helping families with the wish to donate and researchers who work to further understand diseases and disorders that ail the population and develop therapies and cures.
Islet Cell
NDRI provides isolated islet cells and associated materials to approved researchers for non-clinical investigative purposes.
Stem Cell Research
NDRI is committed to collecting cord blood and adult bone marrow resources required by scientists studying stem cell growth and proliferation to develop therapies for a host of common diseases.
Tissue MicroArrays
Tissue microarrays (TMAs) let investigators explore molecular targets at the DNA, RNA or protein level in thousands of tissue specimens simultaneously.
Cancer Research
NDRI continues to provide tissue for the development of cancer cell lines and for DNA and RNA research.
HIV Research Program
The HIV Program provides scientists with organ and tissue samples from HIV positive individuals. These tissues are used in various research studies to find ways to develop new treatments that may completely eradicate the virus.
Human Biological Data Interchange (HBDI)
HBDI has medical history and genealogical data on over 6700 families who are affected by type 1 diabetes. In addition, HBDI maintains a repository of DNA and immortalized cell lines collected from 500 families.
Private Donor Program
The NDRI Private Donor Program provides an opportunity for patients and their families to make a directed donation of discarded surgical tissue or organs and/or tissue obtained post-mortem for use in medical research. The donor can designate that any organs or tissue can be recovered for research or limit the donation to a specific tissue and/or research into a specific disease.