Civin Laboratory of Neuropathology

Tom Beach, MD, Ph.D.

A key to the Institute's success has been its Brain/Body Donation Program. Brain and body tissue donation is a gift that makes it possible for researchers to study various types of diseases and disorders.

The real questions to what causes diseases or occurs in the brain and body only will be fully answered through the study of donated tissue.

Through the process of clinically examining participants during the last years of their lives and then receiving their tissue at death, many medical mysteries are being unveiled. More than 2,000 area residents have donated brain and body tissue to the program.

Scientists in the Civin lab are growing cells that provide a model of what’s happening in the blood vessels of the brain of an Alzheimer’s patient, and how inflammation, cholesterol and amyloid may all come together in this model to cause vascular and, ultimately, brain damage in the disease.

In addition, scientists in the Civin lab are also leading research on potentially toxic molecules that appear to accumulate in the brains of Parkinson’s patients and cause nerve cells to die.