Mechanism and Pharmacodynamic Material Basis of Neurodegenerative Disease Therapies

Abstract

Neurodegenerative diseases are debilitating disorders defined as loss of function or progressive destructing structure of the nervous system with high prevalence among the aging population. These diseases mainly include Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), Huntington’s disease (HD), and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). They are significantly associated with age and degeneration, becoming a devastating global health issue as a result of the growth of mean life expectancy worldwide. Few or no effective treatments are available for age-related neurodegenerative diseases, causing large socioeconomic and personal costs. The last 15 years have seen a boom in the use and integration of “omic” approaches (such as genomic, transcriptomic, epigenomic and metabolomic techniques) to study neurodegenerative disease in an unprecedented way. While, to date, no therapy based on these approaches is available to cure neurodegenerative diseases. Therefore, it is necessary to search for new, safe, and effective drug candidates and treatment strategies. In this Research Topic, our prime focus would be on the use and integration of “omic” approaches to study biomarkers, pathogenesis, disease progression and new therapeutic target of neurodegenerative diseases, so as to search for new, safe, and effective drug candidates.