An updated review on the approved and potential drugs for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is one of the most complex and prevalent neurodegenerative disease, and over 55 million people around the world are suffering from it. There are only three groups of drugs such as acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, NMDA antagonist, and anti-amyloid antibodies that are clinically approved for the treatment of AD. Among these three groups of drugs only anti-amyloid antibodies are disease modifying medicines and the rest two groups of drugs only treat the symptoms of AD. Hence, there is a dire need of sufficiently potent drugs and treatment strategies to manage this disease. Although the exact etiology of this progressive neurodegenerative disease is still unknown, factors like genetic, environmental, and lifestyle, might play a significant role. Meanwhile, extensive research is continuously being performed for developing potential/novel drugs for AD such as beta-secretase enzyme inhibitor, tau protein targeted inhibitors, genetic factors like ApoE4 gene and immunotherapies, emphasizing the multifaceted pathophysiology of the disease. Despite of certain challenges in novel drug development for AD, results obtained from recent clinical trials and preclinical studies, suggest that a large number of compounds has the potential to be used in the future therapeutic strategies for AD.