(1) Human brain tissue. The German brain bank (BrainNet) and a European brain bank (BNEII) are both coordinated by the Institute of Neuropathology (ZNP) in Munich. We therefore have access to a variety of well characterized brain tissues of various human diseases. These tissues are to be provided to other research groups.

(2) Neuropathologic correlation with phenotype. Should we or any other group find novel proteins that may play a role in the pathogenesis of disease we will try to correlate the appearance of these proteins with the phenotypes of neurodegenerative disease.

(3) For systematic proteomic approaches to investigate processes of ageing and neurodegeneration we will use Laser capture microscopy (LCM) to isolate anatomically defined areas of the brain. The rationale of this approach is that this enables us to investigate areas that are in the very early stages of neurodegenerative disease and do not yet show neuropathological changes whereas other areas already show morphological changes and a specific neuropathological diagnosis can be made. This is possible because the most important neurodegenerative diseases, i.e. Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD) show a systematic progress of changes in exactly described anatomical structures.