Founded 1980 | ||
Headquarters Pennsylvania, United States | ||
The National Disease Research Interchange (NDRI) is an American 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 1980 to provide donated human cells, tissue and organs to researchers. It is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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NDRI's objective is to make it easy for researchers to get the human tissues and organs they need, prepared, preserved and shipped according to their scientific protocols, as quickly as possible, and in the largest available quantities.
Biospecimen provisioning and storage
The vast majority of the biospecimens supplied by NDRI are matched according to researcher-specified protocols and sent directly to the investigator. These include samples shipped at 4ºC immediately after procurement, as well as snap-frozen, fixed and paraffin and OCT-embedded materials.
The Online Biospecimen Catalogue (OBC) is an additional resource offered by NDRI that allows approved researchers to select from a variety of banked human organ and tissue samples from all body systems. Tissues and organs offered via the OBC represent a small percentage of material supplied to the research community by NDRI every year, and not all materials are listed in it.
Biospecimens are stored at -82 degrees Celsius in a freezer room housing fourteen tissue freezers and liquid nitrogen storage tanks.
Funding
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) have provided grants to NDRI since 1984. Current support for NDRI comes from several institutes within the NIH, including funding from the National Center for Research Resources, the National Eye Institute, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, and the Office of Rare Diseases Research. Additional support comes from voluntary health organizations and from corporate and individual donors.