Therapeutic targets for Alzheimer's disease.

Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most common form of degenerative dementia, represents a tremendous unmet medical need. Although AD had already been described about 100 years ago and despite enormous research efforts, at present only few symptomatic treatment options exist for the more than 25 million patients worldwide. This situation might change as many targets for therapeutic intervention have been identified based on the in-depth study of the pathology of the disease in model systems and humans, and of its underlying genetics.

Objective/methods: These targets are highlighted in the context of contemporary drug discovery for the identification of new therapies.

Results/conclusions: 'Translation' of recent discoveries into disease-modifying therapies has not yet been accomplished. The future will show whether the current drug discovery and development 'pipelines' of pharmaceutical companies yield efficacious new medicines for AD.