The advantage of having a tissue bank is that researchers can go to one place & access enough tissue to conduct research. With only 4 patients in 1 million, LMS tissue samples are scarce and scattered in every hospital across the globe. Often, hospitals hoard and refuse to share these precious samples. Researchers have no way to know who or where these LMS patients are.

Bottom line, without a tissue bank, it is impossible for researchers to get enough samples to conduct any valuable research on LMS. No samples, no research, no cure!

In 2004-2005, the LMS patient community collected over 300 of their own tissue samples and donated them to Dr. Matt van de Rijn at Stanford University. Using state-of-art bio technology, Dr. van de Rijn conducted an extensive DNA & tissue microarray analysis. This study is by far the most extensive and promising research ever done on LMS. We are all anxiously awaiting the pending results of this work.

These 300 samples, along with all samples sent since then, are now stored in the LMS Tissue Bank. Dr. Brooks, at U of Penn Hospital, set up this bank to enable more researchers to take advantage of these samples for further study.

In 2011, Dr. Matt van de Rijn, took over the responsibility of storing the LMS Tissue Bank. He encourages all LMS patients to send their samples to him.

We are depending on the spirit of the LMS community to continue to donate tissue for research. We need as many samples as possible, there are no limits. Together, we can build our LMS tissue bank’s collection.