Alzheimer’s Disease: An Overview of Major Hypotheses and Therapeutic Options in Nanotechnology

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), a progressively fatal neurodegenerative disorder, is the most prominent form of dementia found today. Patients suffering from Alzheimer’s begin to show the signs and symptoms, like decline in memory and cognition, long after the cellular damage has been initiated in their brain. There are several hypothesis for the neurodegeneration process; however, the lack of availability of in vivo models makes the recapitulation of AD in humans impossible. Moreover, the drugs currently available in the market serve to alleviate the symptoms and there is no cure for the disease. There have been two major hurdles in the process of finding the same—the inefficiency in cracking the complexity of the disease pathogenesis and the inefficiency in delivery of drugs targeted for AD. This review discusses the different drugs that have been designed over the recent years and the drug delivery options in the field of nanotechnology that have been found most feasible in surpassing the blood–brain barrier (BBB) and reaching the brain.

Keywords

• Alzheimer’s disease
• neurodegeneration
• blood–brain barrier
• nanotechnological approaches
• drug delivery