european society for clinical cell analysis

ESCCA is a scientific society founded to ensure the continuation of activities of the European Working Group on Clinical Cell Analysis. EWGCCA was formed in 1996 with Biomed-2 grant to establish a collaboration between six European centers who use and develop flow cytometry applications mainly for clinical purposes. Since 1996 EWGCCA organized annual European course and very successful to standardization, validation and dissemination of knowledge of flow cytometry and its implementation in clinical laboratories. The courses and conferences included presentations by high-level US stakeholders. The EC-funded multicentre European standards successful project, concluded in 2004, was one of the major achievements of EWGCCA. It generated a number of technical guidelines on identifying the subset of cells and absolute counting, cell enumeration rod and sub-assemblies, control of leukocyte depletion of blood products, analysis by flow cytometry basic microbeads, HLA-tetramer analysis and validation of stabilized blood products. Many of the most cited scientific articles have also been published. The rationale for the transformation to EWGCCA ESCCA was that EWGCCA was a foundation that did not allow personal adherence. Since it was fully established as a scientific society in 2006, ESCCA had a Board of Directors, elected every three years by its active members, and continued and expanded the original scope of EWGCCA.