PHILADELPHIA, PA., April 7, 2020— The National Disease Research Interchange (NDRI) has been awarded a research subcontract of $275,429 to support the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) and the Office of Director aimed at furthering the research of the causes and behavioral associations with individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
NDRI has been consistently supported by the NIH to support Autism research since 2016. With this award, NDRI will continue to provide the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Neurobiobanks with post-mortem brains recovered from donors with a history of ASD that will further research into the etiology of the disease. A second objective of this work is to collaborate with leading medical research institutions and healthcare professional to identify and recover age-match control brains.
“As the number of individuals diagnosed with autism continuous to grow, so does the need for understanding and research,” said Bill Leinweber, President and CEO of NDRI. “We are privileged to continue to expand our work to provide urgently needed human tissue to advance neurologically related research.”
This grant is in addition to a current $6.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded to fund NDRI’s Human Tissue and Organs for Research Resource (HTORR) program, national leadership with the recovery and distribution of human organs and tissues for medical research. NDRI’s Human Tissue and Organs for Research Resource (HTORR) Program has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for over 30 consecutive years to support research programs across multiple disciplines. It is through the HTORR program that NDRI provides academic biomedical investigators with donated normal and diseased human tissues and organs recovered from a diverse donor pool using customized procurement, processing, and preservation and distribution protocols.
“Continued support from the NIH affirms the strong value of our mission,” said Thomas Bell, MS PhD, NDRI’s Senior Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and principal investigator for the HTORR grant. “NDRI has demonstrated the capacity to leverage this support to enable a broad range of complex research projects requiring human organs and tissues to understand countless diseases and disorders, including the crucial need for neurological research including Autism Spectrum Disorder.”
“It is indeed a privilege for NDRI to be awarded support from the NIH to further leverage the impact of our longstanding efforts to support investigators with the biospecimens needed to advance discovery,” said Mary Hendrix, PhD, President of Shepherd University and Chair of the NDRI Board of Directors.
About NDRI
The National Disease Research Interchange (NDRI) is the nation’s leading source of human tissues, cells and organs for scientific research. A not-for-profit 501 (c) (3) organization founded in 1980, NDRI is funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, public and private foundations and organizations, pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporations. NDRI is a 24/7 operation that partners with a nationwide network of over 130 tissue source sites (TSS), including organ procurement organizations (OPOs), tissue banks, eye banks, and hospitals. The TSS, are distributed throughout the USA, in 45 states, with concentrations in major metropolitan areas on both the east and west coasts. Their wide geographic distribution allows NDRI to provide biospecimens from donor populations with diverse demographics and also facilitates the timely and efficient provision of fresh tissues directly to researchers across the U.S. and around the world. By serving as the liaison between procurement sources and the research community, NDRI is uniquely positioned to support breakthrough advances and discoveries that can affect advances in the treatment and cure of human diseases.
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