Living Tissue Bank

A Scalable Resource for High-Quality Human Biospecimens

Traditional models, such as cell lines and animal studies, have advanced biomedical research for decades. However, they often fall short of capturing the complexity of human disease. While global efforts over the past 30 years have helped standardize how we collect and share human biospecimens, most institutions still struggle with limited access to the diverse, high-quality tissues needed to unlock new treatments and diagnostics.

The Mass General Brigham Living Tissue Bank was created to address this gap. Embedded within New England’s largest surgical program, the Living Tissue Bank provides research teams with access to a wide range of tissues. Our resource supports investigations across multiple fields through a comprehensive collection of surgical discards, longitudinal samples, and matched liquid biopsies — all linked to relevant clinical data.

With direct consultation from expert physician-scientists and access to flexible processing services (including advanced cryopreservation), we enable investigators to drive breakthroughs in human health.

Biospecimens Available

The Living Tissue Bank offers access to a wide range of human tissue types to support diverse research applications. Examples of available tissue types include:

• Diseased and normal tissues from skin, fat, livers, lungs, kidneys, hearts, appendix, adenoids, tonsils, breast, gastrointestinal, vessels, veins, and arteries
• Diseased and normal gynecological tissues from hysterectomies, endometriosis, uterine fibroids, and gynecological malignancies
• Pediatric tissues, when available, with a focus on appendix, adenoids, tonsils, skin (normal, diseased, or burned), and cancerous tissues

The Living Tissue Bank supports both retrospective and prospective tissue collection through a hybrid model. We serve a wide range of scientific and clinical fields, including:

• Plastics and transplantation (healthy tissues)
• Burns
• Cancer
• Cardiovascular
• Thoracic
• Abdominal
• Gastrointestinal
• Reproductive health
• Pediatric
• Vascular

Our infrastructure also supports specialized requests, including cadaveric tissues, when unique clinical phenotypes or customized processing are required. All tissues are banked using standard practices, with options for fixed or unprotected frozen formats. When feasible, fresh tissue collection can be arranged.

To address the growing demand for viable samples in functional studies, we also offer unique cryopreservation services for banking living human tissues.

Contact Us

Interested in making a request or learning how our team can support your research? Please email us at livingtissuebank@mgb.org with your questions or complete the intake form for tissue requests.