**1. Introduction**

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are a worldwide epidemic that have serious implication in public health and constitute a huge amount of healthcare expenditure. Although there are a number of preventable controllable risk factors, such as hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, smoking, obesity, lack of physical activity and diabetes, and others such as age, gender and family history are unmodifiable [1]. Progress in genetic sequencing has allowed the identification of numerous genetic variants associated with specific CVDs [2], but their mechanisms remain unclear. The last few years of research have been a key in understanding how epigenetic mechanisms such as histone modifications are involved in the occurrence and progression of CVDs including atherosclerosis, heart failure, myocardial infarction and cardiac hypertrophy.

Epigenetics represent a phenomenon of altered heritable gene expression without changes to the underlying DNA sequences. The epigenetic alterations can be affected by exogenous stimuli such as diabetes milieu, diets and smoking, while at other times these alterations can subsequently trigger disease initiation [3]. Thus, the impact of epigenetics in CVD is now emerging as an important regulatory key player at different levels from pathophysiology to therapeutics. For instance, histone alterations have been implicated in ECs response to hypoxia and shear stress, in angiogenesis and in endogenous recovery following myocardial infarction (MI) [4]. On the other hand, HDAC inhibitors (HDACi) have been investigated for potential protective effects in heart muscles during acute MI [4, 5].

Tissue repair is one of the main therapeutic challenges facing the scientific community. There are various approaches in improving tissue recovery depending on the pathological conditions, but most of these conditions are initiated by local ischaemia and require a rich network of blood supply for tissue regeneration. Hence, angiogenesis plays a vital part in tissue regeneration in the treatment of CVDs. At present, the promising potentials of angiogenesis therapies are in full swing.
