Summary/Abstract Scientific progress towards prevention, diagnosis and treatment of complex neurodegenerative, neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders is dependent on the availability of well-annotated and catalogued postmortem human brain tissue samples. In order to maximize community-derived brain donations from patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), vascular dementia, unspecified dementia and cognitively normal controls, a working group was established to explore a possible collaboration between the NIH Neurobiobank (NBB) network and Alzheimer’s disease research center (ADRC) neuropathology cores (NP core). The objective of this collaboration is to optimize access to high-quality tissue samples by integrating and taking advantage of existing infrastructures. In 2019, the University of Pittsburgh ADRC (PITT-ADRC) was chosen as one of three pilot sites for this project, with the goal to establish eligibility criteria, recruitment processes and standard operating procedures to align data collection and tissue distribution mechanisms with NBB protocols. Our proposed approach to fulfill the goals of this ADRC-NBB pilot project is outlined in the following six specific aims: 1) Develop and implement a strategy to recruit brain donations through the Brain Donor Project into the ADRC neuropathology core network. 2) Perform detailed neuropathological diagnostic evaluations of all banked cases using state-of-the-art consensus criteria and provide feedback to families. 3) Obtain clinical information and ancillary laboratory tests in alignment with NIH NBB protocols. 4) Upload demographic, clinical and neuropathology data to the NIH NBB case catalog. 5) Distribute tissue samples to the research community in response to requests received through the NIH Neurobiobank portal. 6) Enhance the banking, neuropathology data sharing via NACC and tissue distribution of well-characterized autopsy cases from University of Pittsburgh research study participants and hospital patients with neurodegenerative disorders. Through these aims and in collaboration with the other pilot sites, we will demonstrate the feasibility of establishing ADRC NP cores as affiliate sites of the NIH NBB network and of developing a streamlined process to banking of non-ADRC cases. Our finalized approach will be made available to the wider ADRC community to allow other interested NP cores to join this collaborative brain banking program and further maximize brain donations. In addition, we will enhance brain donations from non-ADRC subjects with AD and related dementias from local neurology clinics as well as research cohorts with strong emphasis on subjects with prior neuroimaging studies, taking advantage of the recently created Brief Data Set at the National Alzheimer Coordinating Center (NACC) to increase accessibility to these cases by the wider research community and to promote tissue sharing.