The pancreas is a combined endocrine and exocrine organ and is uniquely positioned in the upper abdomen between the stomach (posterior and superior margins), duodenum (proximal or medial), spleen (distal or lateral) and bowel (anterior and inferior). The normal pancreas is shaped as for a pistol with the proximal head region attached to the duodenum and comprising the handle while the distal head/neck, body and tail regions form the barrel. The fluid tone of the soft pancreas makes it difficult

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... to maintain its in vivo 3D shape once trimmed of attached duodenum, spleen and peripancreatic soft tissues. The purpose of this protocol is to describe pancreas collection and processing procedures suitable for single cell mapping. We describe the process of dividing the entire pancreas into sequential cross sections that are subsequently photographed, weighed and processed for the wide range of technologies used in HuBMAP and other programs. Steps describe processing samples to fixed samples for paraffin embedding, optical clearing, or fixed frozen blocks as well as unfixed samples for fresh frozen blocks. Methods are based on those established for the Network for Pancreatic Organ donors with Diabetes program as previously published with minor modifications.