Disease-Modifying Targets and Strategies for Alzheimer's Disease and Parkinson's Disease

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Background

As life expectancy increases, more and more people suffer from neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), etc. One of the significant challenges for these diseases is finding reliable disease-modifying treatments, which can postpone or reverse the progression of the disease. Although we have accumulated a large amount of research into understanding neurodegenerative diseases over decades, the exact disease-modifying targets and valuable strategies still need to be developed.

To date, the primary treatment for neurodegenerative diseases is to alleviate symptoms. For AD, one fantastic piece of news is the recent success of the anti-Aβ antibody treatment for Alzheimer's disease (AD). Although it was reported that the antibody aducanumab cleared Aβ plaques from the prodromal or mild AD brains and slowed the cognitive decline of many patients, suggesting its potential disease-modifying effect, more evidence should be provided to verify these results. For PD, levodopa is the best medication to improve motor symptoms. However, prolonged treatment with levodopa will bring side effects, such as fluctuant symptoms, dyskinesia, etc. Moreover, symptoms will continue to deteriorate and be less responsive or even not responsive to the drugs in the end. In the past decades, several promising agents for PD have advanced into clinical trials, including targeting PD risk genes (leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2), glucocerebrosidase (GBA), α-Synuclein), or slowing the dysfunctional cell biology progression of PD (the synapse vesicle trafficking, microtubule motor, inflammation, oxidative stress, mitochondrial function, etc.). Although some drugs showed exciting results in phase 1 or 2 of clinical trials, they all failed to meet primary endpoints in the end. At the same time, non-pharmacological interventions also draw significant attention, such as immune therapy, gene therapy, stem cell transplantation, and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Still, none has reached the goal of modifying the disease. The major impediment is the lack of specific targets that can halt the progression of the disease. Aiming to modify the disorders, the pathogenesis and pathological features of the conditions should be fully elucidated.

Here, we call for excellent research on exploring specific disease-modifying targets and developing advancing disease-modifying strategies for the two prevalent neurodegenerative diseases, AD and PD.

This Research Topic only accepts Original Research and Systematic Review.

The potential topics focus on, but are not limited to:
• Novel disease-modifying targets or strategies for Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease;
• The high-quality clinical trials on AD or PD progression biomarkers, including neuroimaging, electrophysiology, CSF/serum components, risk genes, clinical features, etc;
• The high-quality clinical trials on AD or PD modifying strategies, including drugs or non-pharmacological interventions;
• Highly sensitive and specific predictors or methods for the prognosis of AD or PD;
• Developing the methods of systematic evaluate the effects of drugs and non-pharmacological interventions for postponing the development of AD or PD diseases;
• Exploring the pathogenesis and pathological features of AD or PD diseases progression, such as genetics, epigenetics, neuro-immunity, metabolism, etc.

Keywords: disease-modifying therapies, etiological treatment, biomarker, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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