The University of Cincinnati Cancer Institute’s Tumor Bank is a strictly organized and structured operation that provides researchers access to thousands of human specimens—malignant and paired normal tissues, blood, saliva and urine—as well as associated clinical data.

Patients who choose to donate their tissue or other biospecimens offer researchers at the UC Cancer Institute a tremendous gift. Our goal is to preserve those samples with best-practice standards and deliver it to researchers with the most promising ideas.

The Tumor Bank operates under rigid standards for collecting, processing, storing and distributing biospecimens to ensure that there is no separation between procedures on paper and realities at the research bench. The Tumor Bank Scientific Research Committee reviews requests for samples. Access is granted based on scientific merit and quality to ensure samples are utilized effectively, with respect to the patients who donated them.