Bio-Bank

In partnership with the Hydrocephalus Association and the Hydrocephalus Association Network for Discovery Science (HANDS), a cerebrospinal fluid repository (CSF) repository has been created at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. The HANDS CSF Repository operates within the Washington University Tissue Procurement Center, which also hosts the Central Specimen Bank for the American College of Surgeons Oncology Group, the Neurologic AIDS Research Consortium, the Hydrocephalus Clinical Research Network, and other major multi-institutional studies and contains >400,000 biospecimens.

In its role of ‘honest broker,’ the HANDS CSF Repository works with partners at HANDS-affiliated institutions to freely store and dispense CSF . We encourage all HANDS-affiliated investigators to contribute CSF to the banking effort as possible, and to feel free to request CSF from the repository for translational hydrocephalus research. Below, you will find links to templates for the forms required to partner with the HANDS CSF Repository.

The HANDS CSF Repository was created to provide a central clearinghouse for HANDS researchers to share human CSF samples for collaborative investigation into hydrocephalus of all types. Currently, the repository contains >3000 CSF samples from subjects with posthemorrhagic hydrocephalus of prematurity, congenital hydrocephalus, tumor-related hydrocephalus, subarachnoid hemorrhage-related hydrocephalus, and idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus, as well as CSF from individuals without hydrocephalus. A limited, de-identifed dataset of clinical, imaging, and laboratory parameters is available for every CSF sample.