We briefly discuss the different aspects that enters the open heavy flavor physics focusing the recent developments and the upcoming issues that can be tackled. It has become clear that the interaction of heavy quarks in the Hot QCD matter is largely non-perturbative and the phenomenological estimates within still large error bars are in agreement with the lattice QCD calculation. However there are still significant source of uncertainty that are expected to be reduced thanks to the new and up coming data at low momenta, new observables and the access to bottom measurement. Furthermore a new aspect that is attracting more and more interest is the non-expected large heavy baryon production.
More recently, it is growing also the investigation of the role that heavy quarks can have as a probe of the initial stage of the collisions: impact of glasma dynamics, vorticity and electromagnetic fields.