[Application of flow cytometry to clinical oncology]

The application of flow cytometry (FCM) in the field of clinical oncology is reviewed. Since the development of the instruments, it has already passed more than a decade and, these days, FCM is utilized in a variety of fields, both basic and clinical researches. FCM has been getting familiar also in Japan for these several years and now more than fifty instruments are running in many laboratories. In this issue, the application of FCM to clinical oncology is described by several authors from different fields. In this review, the definition of FCM, the principle how it works, its advantages and the history of its development are briefly introduced. Furthermore, the application of FCM by measurements of cellular DNA content for estimation of cell cycle distribution and ploidy studies or by measurements of cell surface fluorescence for detection of cell surface antigens is reviewed in hematology, immunology, cell kinetics of cancer and chemotherapy, automated cytology, chromosome analysis and other fields.