Epigenetic therapy in a new era of medicine: creating and integrating molecular profiles of patients

In the 17^th century, Antonie von Leeuwenhoek revolutionized microbiology with the advent of the microscope. Today we are in a similar revolution for cancer and genetics with the development of sequencing technology as “molecular microscopes” to peer into cells and catalog their genetic and epigenetic changes. We now have the capabilities to study diseases like cancer and how tumors evolve via single-cell sequencing and dynamics (1,2). Sequencing has gone far to transform the way we understand and view the central dogma of biology (3). While the central dogma of molecular biology is still a guiding framework for understanding disease (DNA to RNA to protein), we are beginning to understand the panoply of regulatory levers and mechanisms that guide—and even deviate—from such an orderly progression of molecular relationships, especially in the context of diseases like cancer.