Multifunctional Ligand Approach: Search for Effective Therapy Against Alzheimer’s Disease

ABSTRACT

Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive, incurable, and complex neurodegenerative disease. Currently, an effective treatment that can slow down or stop the damage and death of neurons, which is a characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease, is lacking. Taking into account the complex nature of the disease, a multitarget design approach has been developed for the production of new potential anti-AD agents. The goal of this approach is to create a single molecule that can interact selectively with several desired molecular targets relevant to the disease. This strategy was successfully developed two decades ago and has been improved in recent years. This chapter describes the progress made in the discovery and design of selected multitargeted drugs based on molecular targets, which can be used for treating Alzheimer’s disease. The most promising among these drugs are the molecules having properties that are valuable not only in the symptomatic therapy but also in the causal treatment of the disease. The main hypotheses of Alzheimer’s disease, such as β-amyloid (Aβ), tau, and cholinergic, suggest that compounds capable of inhibiting the aggregation of neurotoxic Aβ amyloid peptide and tau protein, and improving the cholinergic neurotransmission, may possess such properties. Examples of such multifunctional molecules, which have been recently reported in the literature, are presented in this chapter.