Between 1985 and 1992, thousands of cryopreserved veins were used for arterial bypass surgical procedures. The formation of extracellular ice during cryopreservation is known to be a hazard to structured organs and tissues, and conventional cryopreservation strategies have proved unsatisfactory. Vitrification is an alternate method of freezing that involves the solidification of an object in an amorphous glassy state that obviates the formation of ice crystals. In this issue, Taylor and colleagues have evaluated a vitrification approach to preserving vascular tissue, and show that it markedly improves the function of thawed tissues compared with those subjected to a standard crypreservation technique. The vitrified grafts were also shown to function in an autologous transplant model similarly to fresh tissue grafts (see pp. 296–299).