Heavy quark probes of QCD

Large heavy flavor enriched data sets are being accumulated by the CMS experiment in different collision environments and energies provided by the LHC. These offer robust probes for testing the standard model and potentially reaching beyond it. In this report I concentrate on recent production measurements in proton-proton, ion-ion and proton-ion collisions. These allow to probe the underlying QCD mechanisms of hadron formation and the properties of QCD matter under extreme temperatures.