Transitioning single-cell genomics into the clinic

The use of genomics is firmly established in clinical practice, resulting in innovations across a wide range of disciplines such as genetic screening, rare disease diagnosis and molecularly guided therapy choice. This new field of genomic medicine has led to improvements in patient outcomes. However, most clinical applications of genomics rely on information generated from bulk approaches, which do not directly capture the genomic variation that underlies cellular heterogeneity. With the advent of single-cell technologies, research is rapidly uncovering how genomic data at cellular resolution can be used to understand disease pathology and mechanisms. Both DNA-based and RNA-based single-cell technologies have the potential to improve existing clinical applications and open new application spaces for genomics in clinical practice, with oncology, immunology and haematology poised for initial adoption. However, challenges in translating cellular genomics from research to a clinical setting must first be overcome. In this Perspective, Lim et al. discuss the potential benefits of, and the challenges associated with, translating single-cell genomic approaches from research to clinical settings.