Cancer, being a major healthcare concern worldwide, is one of the main targets for the application of emerging proteomic technologies and these tools promise to revolutionize the way cancer will be diagnosed and treated in the near future. Today, as a result of the unprecedented advances that have taken place in molecular biology, cell biology and genomics there is a pressing need to accelerate the translation of basic discoveries into clinical applications. This need, compounded by mounting evidence that cellular model systems are unable to fully recapitulate all biological aspects of human dissease, is driving scientists to increasingly use clinically relevant samples for biomarker and target discovery. Tissues are heterogeneous and as a result optimization of sample preparation is critical for generating accurate, representative, and highly reproducible quantitative data. Although a large number of protocols for preparation of tissue lysates has been published, so far no single recipe is able to provide a "one-size fits all" solubilization procedure that can be used to analyse the same lysate using different proteomics technologies. Here we present evidence showing that cell lysis buffer 1 (CLB1), a lysis solution commercialized by Zeptosens [a division of Bayer (Schweiz) AG], provides excellent sample solubilization and very high 2D PAGE protein resolution both when using carrier ampholytes and immobilized pH gradient strips. Moreover, this buffer can also be used for array-based proteomics (reverse-phase lysate arrays or direct antibody arrays), allowing the direct comparison of qualitative and quantitative data yielded by these technologies when applied to the same samples. The usefulness of the CLB1 solution for gel-based proteomics was further established by 2D PAGE analysis of a number of technically demanding specimens such as breast carcinoma core needle biopsies and problematic tissues such as brain cortex, cerebellum, skeletal muscle, kidney cortex and tongue. This solution when combined with a specific sample preparation technique - cryostat sectioning of frozen specimens - simplifies tissue sample preparation and solves most of the difficulties associated with the integration of data generated by different proteomic technologies.