Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the world, despite big improvements in medical care.
One reason for this is that most current treatments are general and don’t take into account the different ways heart disease shows up in different people. Medicines like statins help many patients, but they don’t work for everyone.
Now, scientists say we may be on the edge of a major breakthrough. A new article in Frontiers in Science explains how powerful tools like artificial intelligence (AI), omics (which study genes and proteins), and systems biology could help doctors create personalized treatments for heart disease.
These tools might allow researchers to design drugs that target the specific genes and proteins behind each person’s condition.
Professor Masanori Aikawa from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School says this new approach could help lower the number of people dying from cardiovascular disease (CVD), which is expected to reach 26 million deaths per year by 2030.
One of the most exciting developments is RNA-based medicine. Traditional drugs can only reach a small number of targets in the body.
But RNA therapies can be made to affect almost any gene, and they may work better and faster. Some early tests already show that RNA therapies can lower cholesterol more effectively than standard drugs.
This new way of treating heart disease is based on understanding that each patient is different. Even people with the same diagnosis can have different symptoms and respond to treatments differently. That’s because heart disease is influenced by many factors, including genetics, lifestyle, and environment.
To create more tailored treatments, researchers are using technologies like genomics and proteomics to study all the molecules in the body. Systems biology helps map out how these molecules work together, and AI helps find new drug targets and design custom drugs.
With enough support and investment, these methods could lead to the creation of drugs that were previously thought impossible to develop—ones that work on disease pathways that are currently considered “untreatable.” This could also make drug development faster, cheaper, and more successful.
Professor Joseph Loscalzo, one of the senior authors, says the future of heart medicine lies in making treatments that are custom-made for each person.
Instead of using the same drug for everyone, doctors could use data to figure out exactly which proteins or genes are causing disease in each patient—and then design a drug just for them.
But to make this dream a reality, scientists say we need more than just technology. They are calling for more teamwork between researchers, the pharmaceutical industry, and health care systems. They also say that governments around the world need to create policies that support this new kind of medicine.
Dr. Sarvesh Chelvanambi, another author, says strong global leadership is needed to bring this new approach to life. He believes countries must work together to invest in research, share data, and create new partnerships that allow precision medicine to benefit everyone—not just people in wealthy countries.
With the right support, personalized medicine could finally change the future of heart disease and save millions of lives.
If you care about health, please read studies that drinking coffee this way can help prevent stroke, heart disease, and drink coffee after breakfast, not before, for better blood sugar control.
For more health information, please see recent studies about natural supplement that could relieve anxiety, and results showing this common food oil in the U.S. can change genes in the brain.
The study is published in Frontiers in Science.
Copyright © 2025 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
