Virtual CYTOmetry.

Abstract

This August issue will appear in the same month that the first CYTO Virtual Conference takes place. The virtuality of this 35th conference of the ISAC is unprecedented in ISAC's history. It will come with several innovations only possible in the virtual space that have been worked out by the creative and diligent Task Force of the ISAC to cope with the presently reduced ability to travel. I am quite excited to witness this first-time experience with the very successful series of CYTO conferences going online. Who knows, but we should be open to this new format of research presentation. We may acquire a taste for it! In support of the CYTO V conference, Cytometry Part A has invited all speakers and (virtual) poster presenters to publish their results in the form of reviews, mini-reviews, original research manuscripts, or short manuscripts. We plan to have rapid peer reviewing and publication in upcoming special issues or special sections representing the latest research and innovations from the international CYTO community. In this issue, I have assembled several publications on hot topics in the field of quantitative single-cell analysis. I would like to draw your attention to the state-of-the-art review from Keyes and colleagues (This issue, 782–799) on machine learning in cytometry for cancer studies, a field that has been a focus of Cytometry Part A for several years as reflected by over 50 publications in just the last 3–4 years. I would also like to highlight the research paper by Ferrer-Front and colleagues (This issue, 824–831), who analyzed peripheral blood leukocytes by high-dimensional mass cytometry (36 isotopes) and high-dimensional spectral flow cytometry (22 colors), and the 28-color OMIP-063 by Payne and colleagues (This issue, 777–781). Also in this issue is the latest report on COVID-19 in our COVID Fast Track program, wherein Huang and colleagues (This issue, 772–776) present a meta-analysis on changes in lymphocyte subset counts in a range of mild to severely ill COVID-a 19 patients. This month, we again welcome a new member to our editorial board, Dr. Raluca Niesner. The most recent previous addition to our journal's excellent team of editors was Xuantao Su from Shandong University just a few weeks ago (1). I wish to welcome Prof. Dr. Raluca Niesner from the Deutsches Rheuma-Forschungszentrum (German Rheuma Research Center) DRFZ in Berlin, Germany, as our latest member of the team of Associate Editors. Raluca will be responsible for developing content in the field of intravital microscopy. Raluca already guest-edited an exciting special issue together with Anja Hauser and David Entenberg on “Intravital Microscopy: Innovations and Applications” (2). I would like to introduce you to our new Associate Editor: Raluca A. Niesner received her diploma degree in Chemistry from the Technical University Braunschweig, Germany, in 2001 and her PhD. in Biophysical Chemistry in 2005. She then was a postdoctoral scientist specializing in intravital multiphoton imaging at the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig, Germany. Following her genuine interest for the technological development of intravital imaging to answer questions relevant to medical and biomedical research, she moved, in 2008, to become an independent scientist with an ad-persona DFG-grant to the Charité and Max-Delbrück Center in Berlin. Between 2009 and 2011, she was also a Rahel-Hirsch Habilitation Fellow of the Charité. In 2010, she became a group leader in Biophysical Analytics at the DRFZ, Berlin—a Leibniz institute—and the position was confirmed in 2013. In 2018, she also became professor of Dynamic and Functional in vivo Imaging at the Freie Universität Berlin (Free University Berlin). Since 2011, she has led the Central Laboratory for Advanced Imaging at the DRFZ together with Prof. Dr. Anja E. Hauser. Also in 2011, she got involved with ISAC and has been actively organizing, reviewing, and presenting at all CYTO conferences. From 2015 to 2019, she was a Marylou Ingram ISAC Scholar and is currently the vice president of DGfZ—the German Society for Cytometry (http://www.dgfz.org/). Since 2011, she has been active as a reviewer and author for Cytometry Part A and guest-edited the special issue “Intravital microscopy: applications and innovations” (2). Dr. Niesner's laboratory is currently working on the development of multiphoton microscopy approaches with a special focus on longitudinal intravital imaging of chronic inflammation in various organs and bone regeneration after injury, as well as on functional tissue imaging using endogenous and FRET-based in vivo fluorescence lifetime imaging. Raluca Niesner's areas of expertise are multiphoton excitation imaging, time-resolved fluorescence microscopy, longitudinal intravital imaging, multimodal optical microscopy, and intravital applications of NAD(P)H-FLIM and FRET-FLIM to chronic inflammation and bone regeneration (Fig. 1). I look forward to the support of our journal by Raluca and am most certain that Raluca' expertise and activities will help to further expand Cytometry Part A.