PORTLAND (AP) – A Maryland research laboratory plans to stop collecting brains for research after deciding to terminate its contract with the San Diego medical examiner’s office on June 30, a lab official said Wednesday.

The Stanley Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Md., which has been criticized in Maine over its brain-procurement program, will no longer acquire brains after it terminates the contract, according to Lori Keenan, an attorney with the institute.

The lab has more than 600 brains, enough to maintain a sufficient supply for the foreseeable future, Keenan said. She added that the lab has run out of space to store additional brains.

“We’re literally out of freezer capacity,” she said.

The lab’s brain collection program has come under scrutiny in Maine, prompting the state to suspend its program to supply brains to the institute.

The Portland Press Herald reported after a 10-month investigation that the state’s former funeral director was paid $150,000 by the Stanley Institute for brains he obtained from bodies that were taken to the state medical examiner’s office between 1999 and 2003.

Matthew Cyr has been accused by several Maine families of using misleading tactics to get people to donate brains of loved ones who died. The Stanley Institute uses brain tissue for research on bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

In April 2004, a Gorham family filed a lawsuit alleging that their son’s brain had been taken without permission. Another lawsuit was filed in January, and the program has come under investigation by state and federal authorities.

Keenan said that the decision to stop collecting brains was unrelated to what has happened in Maine.

“That’s a decision that has taken several years to come to,” she said.

A lawyer for San Diego County, Bill Pettingill, said the Stanley Institute was terminating a three-year contract it signed last June.

Under the agreement, San Diego officials agreed to try to collect 60 brains per year. The Stanley Institute agreed to pay the county office about $110,000 annually, plus the salary of an employee.

The Maryland lab’s relationships with medical examiners’ offices in Maine and Minnesota have also ended in recent years.

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Information from: Portland Press Herald, https://www.pressherald.com

AP-ES-03-10-05 0912EST