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SPECIAL EDITION · ICCS 2026 · MIAMI · OCT 4, 2026
The 41st International Clinical Cytometry Meeting & Course is under way at the Hilton Miami Downtown. The three-day course wraps this morning, and the meeting proper runs from this afternoon through Tuesday, Oct 6. This special edition is a field guide to the next three days: which sessions matter, what the program says about where clinical flow is heading, and what the vendors brought. All times are ET. Tell us what we missed — hit reply.
■ The shape of the meeting
This year's plenaries line up as a single argument. Sunday opens on regulation (CLIA, CAP, CLSI). Monday covers diagnosis and then lab technology, including a joint ICCS/ESCCA session on spectral harmonization. Tuesday goes to MRD in the morning and AI in the afternoon. Every plenary opens with a CSI case, the society's case-study format.
Three themes run through the program:
Spectral is going clinical. It gets a lunch workshop and half a joint plenary.
AI has moved from future-tense to implementation. A full Tuesday plenary is built around labs already doing it.
MRD guidance is being rewritten. The program has ELN 2025 for AML and new iMDS ELN recommendations for MDS.
Registered remotely? Both in-person and remote registrants get session recordings for 30 days after the meeting, though recording is at each speaker's discretion. Corporate and lunch workshops are in-person only.
■ Sunday, Oct 4: regulation, and the Coulter Lecture
Plenary 1 — Regulatory/Administration (2:30–5:15 pm)
Chairs: Bruce Greig (Vanderbilt) and Katie DeVitt (University of Vermont). ICCS President Wolfgang Kern (MLL Munich Leukemia Laboratory) opens the meeting at 2:30, and Aaron Wilk (Stanford) presents the first CSI case. The talks:
3:00 · "Publishing in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" — Fred Preffer (Mass General)
3:20 · "Modernizing CLIA" — Gerald E. Marti
4:20 · "Understanding the Intent of the CAP Flow Cytometry Checklist" (two parts) — Giovanni Insuasti (Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist) and Samreen Fathima (University of Minnesota)
4:50 · "CLSI Standards Updates: H42 and H43" (two parts) — Katie DeVitt (University of Vermont) and Wolfgang Kern (MLL Munich)
Why it matters: H42 covers T-cell subset enumeration and H43 covers leukemia/lymphoma immunophenotyping, so these updates reach the SOPs of nearly every clinical flow lab. Pair them with the CAP checklist talk and you have your next inspection cycle.
Wallace H. Coulter Lecture — Joe DiGiuseppe (5:15–6:00 pm)
The society's top honor, given for "lifetime contributions to the science, education and practice of Clinical Cytometry," goes to Joe DiGiuseppe, director of hematopathology at Hartford Hospital. Wolfgang Kern chairs. DiGiuseppe has been all over this year's meeting. He taught listmode analysis and pattern recognition in the course and closed it this morning with "Future of flow - AI." On Monday he co-teaches a lunch workshop on publishing your flow work with Fred Preffer. The program gives no lecture title.
Also Sunday
Corporate workshops (12:30–2:30 pm, Concerto A, in-person only): Beckman Coulter Life Sciences, Cytek Biosciences, Sysmex America and Waters Biosciences (BD). On-demand corporate workshops from Slingshot Biosciences and Streck are also available.
Poster Session 1 and Exhibit Reception (6:00–7:30 pm, Symphony 2-4).
Career Lab (7:30–8:30 pm), open to ICCS members.
■ Monday, Oct 5: diagnosis, then the lab
Plenary 2 — Diagnostic Flow (8:30–11:30 am)
Chairs: Cara Shirai (Washington University in St. Louis) and Fabienne Lucas (University of Washington). Vorapat Vorapanya (UNC Chapel Hill) presents the CSI case. The talks:
"The Evolving Role of Flow Cytometry in Bone Marrow Evaluation: Insights from the Bone Marrow Pathology Working Group" — Olga Weinberg (UT Southwestern)
"Recent developments in NK cell immunophenotyping, including NK cell receptor restriction, KIRs and other approaches in diagnostic flow cytometry" — Aaron Wilk (Stanford). He is first author of the Stanford/UW/BIDMC/Mayo best-practices paper on NK clonality that we covered last Monday (Cytometry B, Sep 25, 10.1002/cyto.b.70076). His title promises KIRs and receptor restriction; expect the paper's reflex algorithm and pitfalls.
"Diagnostic advances and CD38-centered strategies in multiple myeloma treatment and monitoring in the era of targeted therapies" — Afshin Shameli (University of Washington)
"Small Cells, Big Signals: Flow Cytometry for Platelet Disorders" — Benjamin Spurgeon (Versiti)
Lunch workshops (11:30 am–12:30 pm, in-person only)
"Practical Considerations for Implementing Clinical Spectral Flow Cytometry" — Joe Lownik (Cedars-Sinai) and Jean Oak (Stanford) (Concerto A)
"T-cell lymphoma diagnostics including TRBC1 and TRBC2" — Chrysanthi Tsamadou (MLL Munich) (Concerto C)
"Inherited Bone Marrow Failure Syndromes & Flow Cytometry Clues" — Rachel Mariani (Phoenix Children's) (Concerto B)
"Publishing your flow cytometry work" — Joe DiGiuseppe (Hartford Hospital) and Fred Preffer (Mass General) (Acapella 1)
Plenary 3 — Flow Lab Technology, joint ICCS/ESCCA (1:00–4:00 pm)
Chairs: Leo Lin (ARUP Laboratories) and Jolene Cardinali. The talks:
CSI case: "Unmasked Systemic Mastocytosis in AML" — Mariam Posso, David Czuchlewski, Evelyn Lockhart and Daniel Babu (University of New Mexico)
"Harmonizing Spectral Flow Cytometry in the Clinical Lab: A Call for a Standing Working Group" (two parts) — Jean Oak (Stanford) and Joe Lownik (Cedars-Sinai)
"ARUP Laboratory's Experience with Rarity's SuperRCA® Molecular Flow Assay" — Leo Lin (ARUP Laboratories)
"Functional precision medicine predicts outcome and therapy response in AML" — Jeremy Ryan (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute)
Why it matters: Oak and Lownik are calling for a standing working group on spectral harmonization: the gap between buying a spectral cytometer and reporting patient results from it. They also teach the lunch workshop the same day, so Monday is effectively a half-day spectral track. The SuperRCA talk is the one to watch if you run molecular and flow MRD side by side. ARUP announced in February that it was the first U.S. reference lab to validate the assay.
Also Monday
Business Meeting (8:15 am), open to all ICCS members.
Poster Session 2 (4:00–5:30 pm).
Meet The Committees (5:30 pm).
Social Networking Evening (7:00–9:00 pm, Soundgarden).
■ Tuesday, Oct 6: MRD in the morning, AI in the afternoon
Plenary 4 — MRD/Rare Event Analyses (8:30–11:30 am)
Chairs: Sa Wang (MD Anderson) and Mikhail Roshal (Memorial Sloan Kettering). The talks:
CSI case: "Menin Inhibitor-Induced Differentiation of AML" — Aurelio Falconi, Adam Wilberger, Evelyn Lockhart and Daniel Babu (University of New Mexico)
"Technical Aspects of High-Sensitivity B-ALL MRD: Indian Recommendations" — Prashant Tembhare (Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai)
"AML MRD guidelines by ELN 2025" — Wolfgang Kern (MLL Munich)
"MRD in mature T & B cell neoplasms" — Mikhail Roshal (Memorial Sloan Kettering)
"ELNiMDS recommendations" — Arjan van de Loosdrecht (Amsterdam UMC)
Why it matters: The menin-inhibitor case is a preview of a problem every AML MRD lab will meet. Differentiation therapy changes the leukemia-associated immunophenotype you are tracking. Add ELN 2025 and the MDS recommendations, and this morning is the year's guideline update in one sitting.
Lunch workshops (11:30 am–12:30 pm, in-person only)
"Clinical Flow Cytometry in the AI Era" — Joe Lownik (Cedars-Sinai) and Xuehai Wang (Vancouver General Hospital/UBC)
"Real-World Example of a Validation Plan: Flow Cytometer and Cell Prepper" — Jolene Cardinali
"Recommendations of the iMDS ELN flow cytometry working group on MDS diagnostics" — Arjan van de Loosdrecht (Amsterdam UMC)
"Flow Test Utilization" — Adam Seegmiller (Vanderbilt)
Plenary 5 — Artificial Intelligence Implementation in Flow Cytometry Labs (1:00–4:10 pm)
Chairs: Xuehai Wang (Vancouver General Hospital/UBC) and Rachel Mariani (Phoenix Children's). Wei J. Wang presents the CSI case. The talks:
"Implementation of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning in Clinical Flow Cytometry" — Brendan O'Fallon (ARUP Laboratories)
"Integrated application of AI in routine flow diagnostics" — Chrysanthi Tsamadou (MLL Munich)
"AI-assisted MRD analysis by flow cytometry at Mayo Clinic" — Pedro Horna (Mayo Clinic)
"Integration of Machine Learning in Multi-color Flow Cytometry for Acute Myeloid Leukemia Measurable Residual Disease Detection" — Sa Wang (MD Anderson)
Why it matters: These are not vendor demos. They are four labs reporting what happened when they put machine learning into sign-out. Listen for how each one validated the model, what it does when it disagrees with a human, and who signs the report.
The meeting closes at 4:00 pm.
■ On the exhibit floor
Exhibit hall hours: Sun 2:30–7:45 pm · Mon 7:30 am–6:00 pm · Tue 7:30–11:00 am.
Listed alphabetically, from the ICCS program and each company's own announcements.
Agilent is unveiling the NovoStation Sample Preparation System at ICCS. The instrument automates reagent cocktailing and sample washing in front of the NovoCyte. In Agilent's validation examples, operator time for a 25-color panel on 30 samples fell from 85.5 to 7.9 minutes. Price and availability aren't in the release. Release, Oct 1
Beckman Coulter Life Sciences has a corporate workshop Sunday and a user group Sunday at 7:00 am.
Cytek Biosciences is at booths 100/101, with a corporate workshop Sunday at 2:00 pm and a user group Tuesday at 7:00 am. Release, Sep 3
Eurofins presents the poster "Artificial Thymic Organ Culture Complementary Diagnostic for T-cell Lymphopenia and Congenital Athymia" (Sharon Manley) at Poster Session 2, Monday 4:00–5:30 pm. Eurofins
FCS Express has a user group Tuesday at 7:00 am.
Slingshot Biosciences has an on-demand corporate workshop: "Moving Beyond Donor Variability: Precision Cell Mimics for Clinical Flow Cytometry Workflows."
Streck has an on-demand corporate workshop: "Whole Blood as a QC Material: What the Data Actually Shows."
Sysmex America has a corporate workshop Sunday.
Waters Biosciences (BD) has a corporate workshop Sunday and user groups Saturday and Tuesday at 7:00 am. The BD FACSDiscover A7 went on global sale Sep 14. A7 release
■ Bench Notes
How to get the most out of ICCS if you're watching from the lab
Prioritize the plenaries. Lunch and corporate workshops are in-person only, but plenaries are recorded for registrants for 30 days at each speaker's discretion. Log in through the ICCS virtual portal (cytometry.org/virtual).
Watch the Sunday standards talks with your SOPs open. Mark every line of your T-cell subset and leukemia/lymphoma procedures that the H42/H43 updates touch. Flag what the CAP checklist talk says inspectors are actually looking for.
Bring a validation question to the AI plenary. For any AI-assisted gating or MRD tool, write down how the speaker validated it: what reference method, how many cases, what discordance rate, and who reviews the flagged results. That's the same evidence your medical director and CAP will ask you for.
If you're adopting spectral, take the harmonization talks as a checklist. Note what Oak and Lownik recommend on reference controls, unmixing QC and cross-instrument comparability. Compare it with your own validation plan before you go live.
Collect slides within 30 days. Recordings expire 30 days after the meeting, around Nov 5. Download handouts while you can, and follow up with speakers directly for slides that weren't posted.
At ICCS this week? Hit reply with what you saw. The best notes from the floor run in Friday's Industry Moves. If a colleague couldn't make it to Miami, forward this to them.