Publication Highlights | Week of Sep 21, 2026

Cytometry Part B had a busy fortnight and Cytometry Part A a quiet one, so this issue leans clinical: a PNH gate built on reticulocytes, a myeloma head-to-head between single-platform flow and Next-Generation Flow, and a new publication series for clinical panels. Cytek gave its first management commentary since the Beckman verdict, Cellares signed its first deal since losing BMS, and ICCS is two weeks out. Forty-eight open jobs, every link opened this week. Tell us what we missed — hit reply.

One algorithm finds the same cell type across CyTOF, spectral flow, and imaging mass cytometry.
Claire Cross and Jonathan Irish (Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the University of Colorado Anschutz) describe Velociraptor, a graph-based extension of Marker Enrichment Modeling that scores each cell's similarity to known populations and registers cells across platforms. Between IMC and CyTOF it matched immune cell types with a median F1 of 0.81; between spectral flow and CyTOF the concordance correlation coefficient was 0.99. The same scoring surfaced a CD15+ subset in breast-cancer tumor cores, and the code is on GitHub (cytolab).

▪ Cytometry Part A · Sep 10 · 10.1002/cyto.a.70066

Gate PNH red cells on CD71+ reticulocytes and the clone you measure quadruples.
Khaliqur Rahman and Rajesh Kashyap's group at SGPGI, Lucknow, screened 782 samples over 24 months, with 120 showing a leukocyte clone above 1%. Adding CD71 to the RBC tube, the immature-RBC PNH clone had a median size of 49.9% against 12.0% for mature RBCs (p = 0.002), and it tracked the granulocyte and monocyte clones far more closely. CD59 MFI on immature RBCs was also higher (8996 vs 5687), which changes how you place the type II/III boundary.

▪ Cytometry Part B · Sep 9 · 10.1002/cyto.b.70070

In myeloma blood, Next-Generation Flow finds more patients with circulating plasma cells but reports about half the percentage.
Elona Saraci and Mattia D'Agostino (University of Torino, AOU Città della Salute e della Scienza) compared single-platform flow with the EuroFlow NGF protocol in screening blood from 34 transplant-ineligible patients on the REAL MM trial (NCT03829371). Single-platform flow detected circulating tumor cells in 29/34 (85.3%), NGF in 31/34 (91.2%), yet the NGF percentage was lower (median 0.0049% vs 0.009%, p < 0.0001); fix-and-perm before acquisition reproduced the NGF numbers, so the cut-off you quote depends on your pre-analytics.

▪ Cytometry Part B · Sep 14 · 10.1002/cyto.b.70068

A day-7 CAR-T count of 48 cells/µL or more halves the hazard of progression after axi-cel.
Brydon Panozzo and Mark Dowling (Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and Royal Melbourne Hospital) followed 176 real-world relapsed/refractory large B-cell lymphoma patients with flow-based CAR-T enumeration at days 7, 14 and 28, reported in real time for 111 of them. Robust day-7 expansion (≥48 cells/µL) was independently associated with better PFS (HR 0.43, 95% CI 0.22–0.83, p = 0.01). Higher expansion also meant more CRS and ICANS, but steroid exposure did not cost PFS.

▪ British Journal of Haematology · Sep 7 · 10.1111/bjh.70825

Freeze whole blood 1:1 and receptor-occupancy samples stay usable for a year instead of three days.
Chunli Huang and Katharine Grugan at Johnson & Johnson (Spring House, PA) diluted whole blood 1:1 with freezing medium and cryopreserved it; T-cell receptor-occupancy results matched fresh blood, extending the stability window from 2–3 days to 12 months post-collection. They extended the approach to multispecific T-cell engagers and to B-cell and monocyte targets and ran shipping and robustness studies. All four authors are J&J employees.

▪ Cytometry Part B · Sep 8 · 10.1002/cyto.b.70069

Cytometry B launches "COMIPs" — a publication format for clinical panels.
Ahmad Al-Attar (University of Pittsburgh) and Kamila Czechowska (Metafora Biosystems, Paris — a flow-software vendor) announce Clinical Optimized Multiparameter Immunophenotyping Panels, a series meant to do for diagnostic labs what OMIPs did for research panels. It is an editorial with no abstract online, so this is a title-only note; if your lab has a validated panel it has never written up, this is the venue.

▪ Cytometry Part B · Sep 16 · 10.1002/cyto.b.70072

No new OMIP appeared in this window.