A Lifelong Dedication to Cytometry - A Tribute to
Guenter Valet
Attila T arnok, Gero Brockhoff
ATRIBUTE
The German Society of Cytometry (DGfZ) is very honored to award Prof. Guen-
ter Valet with an honorary membership to the DGfZ society. Without Guenter Valet
the DGfZ, as well as the entire cytometric world, would be a different place. Due to
his tremendous input into nearly all fields of cytometry, plus his visionary view of
where cytometry is heading, in particular how the future gains in scientific knowl-
edge and diagnostic approaches will be changed by cytometry, he has been and still is
a major spearhead in defining the future goals of the field.
As a trained physician who also studied physics, Valet’s primary interest has
always been to improve diagnosis and therapy. Taking a brief look back at his scien-
tific vitae, one can clearly see that the basis for many of his present goals and agendas
was laid very early in his career. It is clear that he knew very early on where the direc-
tion of cytometry was heading.
As early as 1972 he began using single cell analysis with the methods available at
that time of high-throughput instrumentation of impedance measurements of ery-
throcytes (1,2,3). At the same time he also began publishing important articles on
cell physiology (4,5). Both of these aspects of research have remained guiding princi-
pals throughout his career. Following a postdoctoral position in California where he
worked on complement systems at the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation
(Mueller-Eberhard HJ) (6,7), he returned to Germany as a staff member of the Max-
Planck Institute (MPI) for Biochemistry in Martinsried to focus on the technologies
of single cell analysis. Here he began to simultaneously analyze different parameters
of cells in suspension (2). Around this time he also began to take the mathematical
modeling of the derived data into closer consideration (8,9). In 1979, his first work
using a flow-cytometer was published (10) focusing on the cell physiology of erythrocytes.
The technological vision of Guenter Valet becomes obvious by looking at many
of his works. A very typical early recognition of what is possible and its future impact
on the field was visionary and is the result of close collaboration with Volker Kachel
(also MPI, Martinsried). In their research Valet, Kachel and others combined the
emerging technologies of flow-cytometry and imaging to create a workable in-flow
imaging system (11,12). A further development of this technology has recently
become commercially available (13,14).
Valet recognized very early on the central importance of multiparametric analy-
sis in understanding the mechanisms of cell system behavior and diseases
(15,16,17,18). In parallel, he continued to implement cell functional analysis by flow
as pH (19), transmembrane potential and phagocytosis (20), enzyme activity (16),
intracellular Calcium (21), Glutathion (22), and oxidative/respiratory burst
(23,24,25). In fact, these publications are among the most frequently cited in his
records.
In the mid-eighties Valet began to develop a classification system (CLASSIF1)
for the individual recognition of disease progression (26) using the numerous quan-
titative data acquired by flow and imaging instrumentation. He demonstrated the
Prof. Dr. Attila T arnok (Ph.D.), Dept. of
Paediatric Cardiology, Cardiac Centre,
University of Leipzig, Str€ umpellstr. 39,
04289 Leipzig, Germany. Tel: 149-(0)341-
8652430, Fax: 149-(0)341-8651143.
E-mail: tarnok@medizin.uni-leipzig.de
PD Dr. Gero Brockhoff (Ph.D.), Institute of
Pathology, University of Regensburg,
Franz-Josef-Strauss-Allee 11, 93053
Regensburg, Germany. Tel: 149-(0)941-
9446607, Fax: 149-(0)941-9446602. E-mail:
gero.brockhoff@klinik.uni-regensburg.de
Published online in Wiley InterScience
(www.interscience.wiley.com)
DOI: 10.1002/cyto.a.20460
© 2007 International Society for
Analytical Cytology
EDITORIAL
Cytometry Part A 71A: 639642, 2007