Editorial: Cytometry in oncology

In recent times, the most dynamically developing field of oncology treatments is the improvement of targeted therapies. One of the most successful targeted therapies is the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy (1). It uses the patient's own, genetically engineered T cells to destroy cancer cells. However, in certain cases, these T cells do not function well or do not persist for long. Particularly interesting were the findings in the paper of Štach M. et al. in relation to predicting therapy efficacy of CAR-Ts, that the biological characteristics of the tumors, the level of expansion in vivo, but not the immunophenotype of produced CAR-T cells, were important parameters. This paper clearly demonstrated a good balance between research and diagnostics, which mutually support each other in development.The research and diagnostics have always been each other's driving force. The investigation and understanding of diseases has improved the accuracy and the speed of the diagnostic test, while the identification of diseases and the isolation of cancer cells have created opportunities for new studies. However, it is important to know how the isolation methods change the immunophenotype of the targeted cells. This kind of research was conducted by Czeti Á. et al., in which they used flow cytometry to monitor the immunophenotype of plasma cells isolated by magnetic beads.It is hoped that the present special issue will encourage a greater number of people to use this diverse and colorful method by demonstrating the diverse oncological uses of cytometry.