Many malignancies with high prevalence in Asia are caused by exposures to carcinogens, such as infectious agents and chemical toxins. Such cancers provide important “natural experiments” for understanding how environmental perturbations can disrupt normal cellular processes to ultimately drive tumor development, at both the genetic and epigenetic level. In this talk, I will describe how genomic approaches have led to important insights into the molecular processes driving various cancers with high-prevalence in Asia. Some of these insights may also prove relevant for treating such Asian cancers.