Personalized epigenetics: prospects and challenges

Besides the usual mix of hopes and hypes, the prospects of personalized epigenetics are promising. Its advent would radically affect all of the 4 P of personalized medicine, shifting the focus of the tailoring of prevention, prediction and therapeutic intervention to the unique epigenetic profile and history of the individual patient. I will highlight the transformative opportunities enshrined in personalized epigenetics, as well as some dangers it entails. In particular, I will emphasize how personalized epigenetics raises qualitatively new bioethical and biopolitical issues, and call attention to the new dimensions of responsibility disclosed by the coupling of epigenetic inheritance and environmental exposure. A timely reflection on its possible impact may help to shape personalized epigenetics toward the more comprehensive approach to health care that Ziegelstein has labeled "personomics" (Ziegelstein 2015).