To date, no central database captures information about stored tissue samples. This handbook serves as a national resource, to bring together for the first time, in a single document, information about tissue storage in the United States. It provides information about several aspects of stored tissue samples, such as how many samples exist in the United States, where they are, who has access to them, and for what purposes they are used. A conservative estimate from the tissue collections described in this book is that more than 307 million specimens from more than 178 million cases are stored in the United States, accumulating at a rate