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 June, 2009                                                                                                                          Home
Human Biospecimens Accelerate
Neurodegenerative Diseases Research
Alzheimer's disease is a progressive and most common form of dementia. It is among the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. Alzheimer's disease accounts for 50 to 70% of dementia cases with no current cure. There is an accelerating worldwide effort under way to find better ways to treat the disease, delay its onset, or prevent it from developing. Hundreds of clinical trials are on their way to find cure for this disease.

Asterand's mission is to provide human tissues and services to accelerate identification and validation of drug targets and enhance the selection of drug candidates with an increased likelihood of clinical success. Essentially, we provide the tools (human tissues and human tissue-based services) to scientists in pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to help them advance their drug discovery programs and find cures for such life threatening diseases and conditions. Asterand is renowned as provider of highest quality, well-characterized human tissue samples with extensive clinical data. Asterand’s XpressBANKTM biobank contains several thousand biospecimens from different therapeutic areas including but not limited to Oncology, Metabolic Diseases, Cardiovascular Diseases, CNS diseases, and Respiratory diseases. The human biospecimens are collected with highest ethical standards and thier quality assessed to determine their suitability in research.

In our quest to help scientists find treatment for Alzheimer's disease, we have expanded our global procurement network to include hospitals that will provide us access to human tissue samples from Alzheimer's disease patients either post surgery or post-mortem. As a result, we will be able to provide paired frozen and formalin preserved diseased tissue 		representing eighteen distinct brain regions implicated in neurodegenerative conditions, primarily Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Each case will be reviewed by a Board certified Neuropathologist. Additional immunohistochemical analysis, e.g. Tau, Ubiquitin or Alpha Synoclein will be performed to characterize the disease state of the specimen if required. In addition, the specimens will be processed in accordance with Asterand's renowned quality assurance procedures which provide stringent controls on specimen collection, sample characterization and on the corresponding clinical data. As part of this process, the RNA integrity of each frozen tissue will be assessed. All of these quality control results and data parameters will be provided to researchers before purchase so they can choose samples that will best meet their scientific requirements.

Features of Asterand's biospecimens and collection protocol:
  1. IRB approved, informed consent obtained ante-mortem
  2. Extensive medical history with symptoms and therapies provided to the client with the sample
  3. Rapid recovery within 8 hours post-mortem
  4. Hemispheric frozen/fixed collection protocol
  5. Ability to perform custom collection protocols to meet your research needs
  6. Diagnostic evaluation by board certified Neuropathologist

For further information, please e-mail: customerservice@asterand.com.
ASTERAND PLC IS THE LEADING GLOBAL SUPPLIER OF HUMAN TISSUE AND HUMAN TISSUE-BASED RESEARCH SERVICES TO PHARMACEUTICAL AND BIOTECHNOLOGY COMPANIES ENGAGED IN DRUG DISCOVERY AND DEVELOPMENT.
Visit us at www.Asterand.com