Novel Therapeutic Target and Drug Discovery for Neurological Diseases

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About this Research Topic

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Background

Neurological diseases represent heterogeneous disorders that involve complex pathological alterations with only a few effective treatments; therefore, there is a great need for the development of novel therapeutic targets and therapies. There are more than six hundred neurological disorders, including dementia, cerebrovascular diseases, mental illness, brain tumor, and infection-caused central diseases, all arising from disruption to the central nervous system. Researchers are attempting to identify promising targets and potential drug candidates from new biological techniques and pharmacological animal studies. Thus, novel target discovery and mechanism elucidation, as well as the development of small-molecule entities, natural compounds, and polypeptides for the treatment of neurological dysfunction, may offer exciting clues for novel therapeutic strategies to halt or mitigate the course of neurological diseases.

Despite the efforts for the management of neurological disorders, the accomplishment of completely effective therapy of these diseases, like Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson’s disease, and malignant glioma, is still considered a challenging task. The present Research Topic focuses on the recent advances on new therapeutic agents utilizing interdisciplinary and multimodal technologies and promising drug targets or biomarkers after verification, which may be of help in overcoming the obstacles for therapeutic discovery and disease pathobiology in neurological disorders.

The Research Topic aims to gather original research, review, systematic review, and mini review on the trend and recent advances on promising therapeutic targets and biomarkers, new pathological mechanisms, and novel therapeutic agents, which are involved in the latest treatment strategy for neurological disorders. Potential topics of interest might include, but are not limited to the following:

1. Discovery of new pathogenesis of aberrant neurological dysfunction with a focus on transcriptional disorder, metabolic abnormality, and immune-inflammatory response.

2. Highlight innovative drug development involving lead compounds and drug candidates.

3. Exploration of role, efficacy, and safety of the potential drug targets.

Important note: i) Manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics analysis of public databases or genomic/transcriptomic sequencing without accompanying by validation (biological validation in vitro or in vivo) are out of scope of the present topic; ii) Substances without clear ingredients, such as complex prescription, crude extract, and herbal mixture, are not considered.

Keywords: Alzheimer's Disease, Dementia, Depression, Parkinson’s disease, Schizophrenia, Stroke, Vascular dementia, Glioma, Neurological disorders, Neurotrophic factor, Therapeutic Agents, Natural Products, Drug target

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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