Advances in Therapeutic Strategies for Alzheimer's Disease: Bridging Basic Research and Clinical Applications

This book summarizes new developments in therapeutic strategies for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and how to translate basic research to the clinic. AD is a heterogeneous and difficult disease to diagnose. No current treatment can modify the development and progress of the disease or delay the appearance of neurodegeneration. The failure of multiple drug candidates is attributed to a lack of understanding of AD pathophysiology, including the factors that promote neurodegeneration, the variances in patient populations that may reflect distinct but overlapping disease mechanisms, and the limited ability to predict the efficacy and safety of drug treatments. The articles compiled in this book attempt to describe what we consider the most important problems and challenges to advancing therapeutic strategies. The objectives of this book are to bridge the gap between basic and clinical research, questioning current concepts or finding new ideas to identify susceptible patients, slow down AD, and develop new drugs or new approaches for AD therapy. All the chapters in this book have scientific originality or present different views on exciting aspects of AD treatment. There are several classes of drugs with a confirmed or potential beneficial effect on AD symptoms, but there is not a single therapeutic agent that can slow or arrest neurodegeneration. Though the scenario is bleak, the emergence of new avenues such as antibodies against tau pathology, tau-tubulin interaction inhibitors, or hippocampal stimulation by optogenetics show potential for the development of new AD treatments. Potential AD therapies targeting gut microbiota, astrocytes, or unique pathways such as those regulating circadian rhythms, currently considered to be peripheral components of AD, offer exciting therapeutic strategies, opening the door to the slow or arrest neurodegeneration processes that define AD