The Development of New Treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease: A Review of Drugs in Development and a Novel Drug Discovery Program

Current treatments for Alzheimers disease (AD) fail to address the underlying pathology of the disease, instead providing symptomatic relief which is often short-lived. Consequently, progression of the disease is unrelenting, leading to a continual decline in cognitive abilities which eventually results in death. New, effective treatments for AD are clearly and urgently needed. This book begins by first reviewing the many promising new therapies under development for AD. The design and implementation of a rational drug design strategy for making novel compounds to treat AD is then described. These drug discovery efforts involved computer modeling, chemical synthesis and in vitro testing. Finally, a clinical trial of L-tryptophan in people with mild to moderate AD is described. People receiving L-tryptophan outperformed those taking placebo on a number of cognitive tests, suggesting the molecule may have application in treating AD. The great diversity of material in the book enables it to appeal to people with interests in many areas, including medicinal chemistry, neurology, clinical medicine and the pharmaceutical sciences.