Bai H, Feng XF. Searching for new drugs to treat Alzheimer’s disease dementia through multiple pathways. World J Clin Cases 2025; 13(1): 100833 [DOI: 10.12998/wjcc.v13.i1.100833]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Hua Bai, MD, PhD, Chief, Full Professor, Department of Neurology, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Guizhou Medical University, No. 172 JianJiangbei Road, Duyun 558099, Guizhou Province, China. baih2020@gmc.edu.cn
Research Domain of This Article
Neurosciences
Article-Type of This Article
Editorial
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Clin Cases. Jan 6, 2025; 13(1): 100833 Published online Jan 6, 2025. doi: 10.12998/wjcc.v13.i1.100833
Searching for new drugs to treat Alzheimer’s disease dementia through multiple pathways
Hua Bai, Xiao-Feng Feng
Hua Bai, Department of Neurology, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Guizhou Medical University, Duyun 558099, Guizhou Province, China
Hua Bai, Department of Neurology, Wulong Branch of the People's Hospital Affiliated to Chongqing University, Wulong 408500, Chongqing, China
Xiao-Feng Feng, Department of Neurology, Guizhou Medical University, Guiyang 550004, Guizhou Province, China
Author contributions: Bai H was responsible for design, conception, writing and modifying the paper, collecting references, discussing related issues, and replying to the reviewer comments; Feng XF was responsible for collecting references and discussing related issues; all of the authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript to be published.
Supported byNational Natural Science Foundation of China (General Program), No. 32060182; and Qiannan Prefecture Science and Technology Plan Project in China, No. Qiannan Kehe She Zi [2022] No. 1.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors declare no conflict of interest in publishing the manuscript.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Hua Bai, MD, PhD, Chief, Full Professor, Department of Neurology, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Guizhou Medical University, No. 172 JianJiangbei Road, Duyun 558099, Guizhou Province, China. baih2020@gmc.edu.cn
Received: August 27, 2024 Revised: September 26, 2024 Accepted: October 16, 2024 Published online: January 6, 2025 Processing time: 71 Days and 14.2 Hours
Abstract
Dementia is a group of diseases, including Alzheimer's disease (AD), vascular dementia, Lewy body dementia, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson's disease dementia, metabolic dementia and toxic dementia. The treatment of dementia mainly includes symptomatic treatment by controlling the primary disease and accompanying symptoms, nutritional support therapy for repairing nerve cells, psychological auxiliary treatment, and treatment that improves cognitive function through drugs. Among them, drug therapy to improve cognitive function is important. This review focuses on introducing and commenting on some recent progress in exploring drugs to improve cognitive function, especially the new progress in drug treatment for AD. We mainly discuss the opportunities and challenges in finding and developing new therapeutic drugs from the aspects of acetylcholinesterase, N-methyl-D-aspartate glutamate receptor, amyloid protein, tau protein and chronic immune inflammation.
Core Tip: The therapeutic targets for acetylcholinesterase (AChE), N-methyl-D-aspartate glutamate receptor, amyloid (Aβ) protein, tau protein and immune inflammation are still the main direction of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD) drugs. Several classical AChE inhibitors are worth keeping. Although there are many experimental research results on antibodies against Aβ or tau protein, there are few successful clinical trials of drugs. The development of new drugs for chronic immune inflammation to treat AD is still in the animal experimental stage. It is necessary to establish a multi-target-oriented precision treatment system for many key links and aspects involved in the pathogenesis of AD.
