title: Role of ligand-based drug design methodologies toward the discovery of new anti- Alzheimer agents: futures perspectives in Fragment-Based Ligand Design.
abstract: Alzheimer's disease (AD), a degenerative disease affecting the brain, is the single most common source of dementia in adults. The cause and the progression of AD still remains a mystery among medical experts. As a result, a cure has not yet been discovered, even after decade's worth of research that started since 1906, when the disease was first identified. Despite the efforts of the scientific community, several of the biological receptors associated with AD have not been sufficiently studied to date, limiting in turn the design of new and more potent anti-AD agents. Thus, the search for new drug candidates as inhibitors of different targets associated with AD constitutes an essential part towards the discovery of new and more efficient anti-AD therapies. The present work is focused on the role of the Ligand-Based Drug Design (LBDD) methodologies which have been applied for the elucidation of new molecular entities with high inhibitory activity against targets related with AD. Particular emphasis is given also to the current state of fragment-based ligand approaches as alternatives of the Fragment-Based Drug Discovery (FBDD) methodologies. Finally, several guidelines are offered to show how the use of fragment-based descriptors can be determinant for the design of multi-target inhibitors of proteins associated with AD.
authors.affiliation: REQUIMTE/Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal. alejspivanovich@gmail.com
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Speck-Planche
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Luan
authors.forename: M N D S
authors.initials: MN
authors.lastname: Cordeiro
mesh_terms: D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000188:drug therapy*; D016229:Amyloid beta-Peptides / Q000037:antagonists & inhibitors; D015195:Drug Design; D038362:Glycogen Synthase Kinase 3 / Q000037:antagonists & inhibitors; D000071679:Glycogen Synthase Kinase 3 beta; D006801:Humans; D008024:Ligands; D008996:Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors / Q000737:chemistry; D021281:Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship
chemical_list: D016229:Amyloid beta-Peptides; D008024:Ligands; D008996:Monoamine Oxidase Inhibitors; D000071679:Glycogen Synthase Kinase 3 beta; D038362:Glycogen Synthase Kinase 3