Molecular Biomarkers for Diagnosis & Therapies of Alzheimer’s Disease

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has been discovered before the century but scientists still have not found the way to cure the disease. The basic requirement for successful cure requires the early diagnosis of the disease. Presence of Aβ42, total tau protein and phosphorylated tau have been used in the earlier days but these diagnostic markers fail the detection in the initial stages. Hence the need of the hour is to identify the various biomarkers which can be detected in the earlier stages of AD. Impaired cellular signaling is common in all the diseases and identification of particular signaling pathway helps in the identification of biomarker. Important signaling pathways such as Akt, FAS/NO, MAPK, Ca2+ are found to be altered in the AD brain. Protein molecules upstream or downstream to these signaling molecules can be potential molecular markers in the diagnosis of AD. This review comprises molecular markers which are crucial in the AD and play a significant role by altering the signaling pathways. These biomarkers will not only help in the understanding of pathobiology of AD but also provide an insight for the researchers working in the direction of AD biomarker discovery and drug discovery.

Keywords

• molecular markers
• Aβ_1-42
• Tau
• amyloid plaque
• neurofibrillary tangles
• hyper-phosphorylation