The lab of Robert Babak Faryabi, PhD, has received three grants from the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, the Abramson Cancer Center Cooper Scholar Fund, and the Penn Epigenetics Institute to investigate the mechanism of epigenetic dysregulation in tumor maintenance and response to targeted therapies. Despite recent progress in developing potent inhibitors for several chromatin-associated proteins, the success of preclinical trials of these drugs have been limited in part due to development of resistance in patients. The Faryabi lab teamed up with the labs of Warren Pear, MD, PhD, the Gaylord P. and Mary Louise Harnwell Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and Golnaz Vahedi, PhD, Assistant Professor of Genetics, to elucidate how the heterogeneity of epigenetic regulatory elements across tumor cells contributes to drug resistance, and whether this information could be used to more effectively target the resistant sub-population. To answer these questions, they have established a state-of-the-art single-cell genome-wide assay that complements commonly used population-based genome-wide technologies at Penn for the first time.