Myocardial ischemia and reperfusion injury (MI/R) represents important sequelae of clinical events. Historically, a number of approaches including, surgical intervention, pharmacological therapy and physical exercise regimes have been prescribed for the treatment of patients with cardiovascular disease. Recently, howevet; attention has focused upon more novel approaches using gene-based therapies to treat cardiovascular and MIIR This mini-review will examine the role that heat shock proteins (HSP), in particular the HSP7O family, and the antiapoptotic protein Bcl-2 play in myocardial protection. Also examined in this review are several techniques including adenovirus and Japan-Liposomal method for delivering genes into the myocardium.