Effective cancer treatment has been precluded by the presence of various forms of intratumoral complexity that drive treatment resistance and metastasis. Recent single-cell sequencing technologies are significantly facilitating the characterization of tumor internal architecture during disease progression. New applications and advances occurring at a fast pace predict an imminent broad application of these technologies in many research areas. As occurred with next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, once applied to clinical samples across tumor types, single-cell sequencing technologies could trigger an exponential increase in knowledge of the molecular pathways involved in cancer progression and contribute to the improvement of cancer treatment.

各种形式的肿瘤内复杂性的存在会阻止有效的癌症治疗，这些复杂性会导致治疗耐药性和转移。最近的单细胞测序技术极大地促进了疾病进展过程中肿瘤内部结构的表征。快速出现的新应用和新进展预示着这些技术在许多研究领域中的广泛应用。就像下一代测序（NGS）技术一样，一旦应用于多种肿瘤类型的临床样品，单细胞测序技术可能会引发与癌症进展有关的分子途径知识的指数增长，并有助于改善癌症治疗。