Alzheimer's Disease Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Alzheimer's Disease, including details on diagnosis, memory loss, heredity, treatment, medication.

Same causes, same cures.

Zhang HY

Shandong Provincial Research Center for Bioinformatic Engineering and Technique, Center for Advanced Study, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo 255049, PR China. zhanghy@sdut.edu.cn

Thanks to the continuing bio-medicinal efforts, similar causes underlying the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and prion diseases (PDs) have been revealed, which include oxidative stress, excessive transition metal ions, and misfolded/aggregated proteins. Therefore, the therapeutic strategy for one disease may be effective for the other. More interestingly, accumulating evidence indicates that not just the strategies but also the prescriptions may be shared by AD and PD treatments. In this review, we first summarize the known dual fighters against AD and PDs (which include antioxidants, metal chelators, and protein aggregation inhibitors), and then indicate that some super-dual-fighters may hit multiple targets implicated in AD and PDs, whose structural features highlight the importance of aromatic moiety and phenolic groups. These findings not only provide important clues to accelerating the screening of anti-AD and anti-PDs drugs but also help to understand the etiology of AD and PDs.

Published 14 November 2006 in Biochem Biophys Res Commun, 351(3): 578-81.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2004-2008 Alzheimer's Disease Research Today. All Rights Reserved.