臨床病理学ジャーナル

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Revolving Pathology: From Morphology to Genomics to Epigenomics and Back Again

Jason Cheng*

About one year ago,a group of leaders from major national pathology organizations and other stakeholders gathered at the Banbury Conference Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, New York, to discuss “genome-era pathology and personalized medicine”. At the conference, a national “Call to Action” was proposed to change the nature of the practice of pathology as well as the education of medical students and pathology residents. Pathologists were also urged to take the leadership of personalized medicine in the genome era. This call suggests that pathology communities have been lagging behind and slow to advance in biomedical science. If this is indeed the case, how can we explain that pathologists have traditionally been at the forefront of medicine ever since our founding father Rudolf Virchow established microscopic morphology-based pathology 150 years ago? Based on clinical and morphologic findings, pathologists have made diagnoses and directed therapies for patients with various diseases. The pathology community has met its challenges, so why do we need to change now?