CYTO Virtual (2021)

When the pandemic took hold of the world in the early part of 2020, it became an imminent reality that many, if not all, scientific societies make major adjustments to all planned in-person meetings, conferences, and congresses. The obvious and necessary change was to pivot from in-person to all-virtual by exploiting an online interactive platform through which science can be shared from anywhere in the world. The rapid spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus acutely disrupted international travel and caused a massive reduction in large public gatherings. Therefore, the International Society for the Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC), our journal's supporting society, led a swift transition from what was to be an in-person CYTO Philadelphia congress to the “CYTO Virtual” meeting. Holding a virtual meeting was particularly critical to ISAC, which is a society, by nature, that is diverse and clearly international. ISAC's science and cytometry contributors conduct research and biomedicine across the globe from Asia to the Americas. Thus, with acknowledgement of the fantastic efforts by ISAC staff and ISAC volunteers, CYTO Virtual was successfully launched in early August of 2020. Table 1 shows the total registrations for CYTO Virtual broken down by country; there were a total of 1144 registrants prior to the start of the meeting. Figure 1 also provides statistics on the percentage of total registrations plotted for three time zones, with data compared to those of the CYTO 2019 meeting. The CYTO Virtual meeting was composed of synchronous, live presentations and discussions, which were experienced over the course of 2 days, and additional content was maintained online for asynchronous dissemination after the date of the live event. The topics ranged from a special COVID-19 session to immuno-insights, subcellular cytometry, cytometric technologies, and many more topics important to the cytometry community. Attendance at the live events ranged from approximately 500 to over 750 viewers, depending on the session. Figure 2 shows the dynamics of the main live science sessions where the number of observed attendees represents the highest number of participants counted at any given time during the Zoom session. The on-demand content was also highly viewed and included posters, commercial tutorials, and oral presentations pertaining to cancer, multidimensional flow, instrumentation, biomarkers, imaging, and much more. Overall, there were 10 on-demand oral talks that could be accessible and several commercial tutorials viewed by over 1000 participants in total for the first month the content was available. In support of CYTO Virtual, this current issue of Cytometry Part A celebrates the science and research achievements by contributors and presenters of the CYTO Virtual meeting. With an open invitation, we solicited contributions to this issue from investigators who presented either posters or oral presentations. The response was healthy, with many international scientists submitting articles for inclusion. Thus, in this issue are papers that are quite diverse and span many different topics. Some are standard cytometry papers on panel characterization, multiparametric analyses, and use of mass and spectral cytometry. Others are related to instrumentation, quantum approaches, and modeling. In general, this special issue captures a flavor of the science performed by the cytometry community that had been planned for presentation before the rampant virus took hold. Unfortunately, the sustained risks associated with COVID-19 are likely to lead to more virtual events that will persist beyond 2020. Also unfortunate is the fact that the COVID-19 disease has caused research to slow at institutions that have had to lockdown to protect the community. Despite the slow down in general biomedical experimentation, research in new areas increased, particularly involving science on the COVID-19 disease. Ultimately, the cytometry community continues to gain achievements that will be important for sharing and disseminating in 2021. The virtual format is again what ISAC anticipates in the coming year. The benefit of this meeting style is that it democratizes the sharing of information across the world in real time. The new meeting in 2021 will be “CYTO Virtual Interactive” and will reach each region in the world by hosting time zone-friendly events with plenary speakers from each respective region of Europe, Asia/Pacific, East Coast USA, and West Coast USA. This is something to look forward to because of the exciting content planned, such as an interactive exposition hall, interactive posters, networking forums on topics, and the ability to connect with other scientists via chat or video. The call for abstracts will be begin at the end of January 2021. We hope that this special issue of Cytometry Part A is appreciated for the contributions by our CYTO attendees as it is important to recognize that the scientific enterprise has continued even more strongly despite the COVID-19 pandemic.