As chairman of the Breast Cancer Campaign Tissue Bank Management Board, I, along with my co-signatories, believe that researchers should have better access to breast-cancer tissue. Christina Curtis and her colleagues, for example, had to approach five tissue banks for the 2,000 samples they used to identify ten distinct types of breast tumour (C. Curtis et al. Nature http://doi.org/hvk; 2012).

Historically, inaccessibility of tissue samples and materials for breast-cancer research has been a major obstacle to translating science into new treatments, with researchers sometimes spending months tracking down suitable samples. A shortage of good-quality tissue with matching clinical data has been another hindrance.

The multicentre UK Breast Cancer Campaign Tissue Bank was opened earlier this year to help solve these problems (see http://go.nature.com/swbsrj). By offering annotated samples to all breast-cancer researchers in the United Kingdom and Ireland, it will help to speed the translation of findings into benefits for patients.