Personalized medicine for cardiovascular diseases: how next generation epigenetic technologies can contribute?

Abstract

Advances in DNA methylation and artificial intelligence have led to new methods for assessing risk and diagnosing coronary heart disease (CHD), the leading cause of death. However, whether these technologies can also be harnessed to generate new pharmacotherapeutic agents or monitor the effectiveness of new or existing CHD therapies is unknown. In this perspective, we review the development of cardiac assessment technologies and the challenges that these older approaches attempted to address. We next describe Precision Epigenetic methods and describe their strengths and limitations, as well as the conceptual framework through which these tools operate. Finally, we discuss their potential application to the development and evaluation of new therapies for CHD and how Precision Epigenetic tools compare to existing testing modalities for CHD. We conclude that the future is bright for the use of Precision Epigenetic methods in cardiovascular medicine and suggest that their routine use could lead to faster, less expensive and more effective healthcare.