A look at where we came from and where we are going

This issue of Cytometry celebrates the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Society of Analytical Cytology, now the International Society of Analytical Cytology (ISAC). This period has seen cytometry grow from its humble beginnings some 40 years ago to a technology that is used in a wide range of scientific disciplines in human, animal, plant, and material science studies. As illustrated by the articles contained in this issue, it should be stressed that cytometry is more than just a technology; it encompasses studies based on the science of quantitative cells to understand the regulation and behavior of cells. To this growth on the side of basic sciences, a parallel explosion in the use of cytometry in the clinical sciences has occurred over the past 25 years. The next set of seven articles highlights this growth in clinical cytometry. The contributions vary in their depth and focus, but all point to the evolution of clinical cytometry from the fringes of diagnostic pathology some 25 years ago to what is now an integral and key component of laboratory medicine. It begins with a poignant commentary from Frank Mandy on the rapid proliferation of flow cytometers in a clinical setting in response to the emergence of one of the worst infectious diseases in the 20th century, the human immu-nodeficiency virus, and the critical need for this testing in resource-poor countries with the now widespread availability of antiretroviral therapy for a disease that continues to haunt the world. We then take a walk through the major areas of clinical cytometry with the authors of each article (Bagwell and their colleagues) to provide a historical perspective and a peek at what is to come in an exciting future. A vignette by Jan Gratama and associates then looks at the exciting and rapidly developing arena of detection of antigen-specific T cells representing an example of how a productive synergy between cytometry and immunology continues to provide scientists with a better understanding of the complex immune response. We end this volume with an article by George Janossy highlighting the extremely exciting role that cytometry will play in the genomics and proteomics era. His contribution highlights the developing, intimate connection between genomics, proteomics, cytometry, and clinical science; a synergistic interaction that will be key if we are to understand how newly discovered genes and proteins function in the regulatory environment of the cell, and how their deregulation …