  I review the color dipole formulation of heavy quark production in the light
of recent RHIC data. Since charm and bottom production directly probe the gluon
density, these processes allow one to study shadowing and parton saturation at
RHIC and LHC. The dipole approach provides a convenient framework to calculate
these nuclear effects. I present numerical results for open charm and bottom
production in proton-proton and proton-nucleus collisions and discuss
transverse momentum broadening of heavy quarkonia.
