Figure 1.

Illustration of traditional epidemiology (A), traditional molecular pathology (B), and molecular pathologic epidemiology (C). Note that molecular pathology plays a central role in molecular pathologic epidemiology. Molecular pathologic epidemiology addresses a question whether a particular exposure factor is associated with a specific molecular change in colorectal cancer (C, left side), as well as a question whether a specific molecular change can interact with a particular exposure factor to affect tumor cell behavior (C, right side). The latter represents a new direction of molecular pathologic epidemiology where results can provide additional insights on mechanism of how the tumoral molecular change and the exposure factor of interest influence tumor cell behavior. CRC, colorectal cancer.