Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease with deficits in recent memory, wordfinding, and language difficulties, and gradually progresses to global cognitive impairment. The cognitive deficits are accompanied by a variety of abnormal neurological and psychiatric symptoms that increase in frequency and severity as the disease progresses. The cause of Alzheimer’s disease is unknown but the fifth-leading cause of death among those age 65 and older. The pathological features of AD mainly include cholinergic dysfunction, extracellular accumulation and deposition of Aβ peptides, intracellular neurofibrillary tangles, and other aberrant signaling pathways. Scientists have found that reducing brain Aβ levels, preventing the excessive phosphorylation of tau protein, rendering mitochondria resistant to damage, protecting neurons from apoptotic processes, controlling microglial activation, inhibiting the release of interleukin-2 and TNF-α, preventing oxidative stress damage; regulating the targets in cholinergic system, inhibiting the over activation of NMDA receptor to reduce the excitotoxicity can halt Alzheimer's disease. 

Although Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the world’s leading cause of dementia and the population of patients with AD continues to grow, no new therapies have been approved in more than a decade. Over the past decade, the focus of drug discovery and development efforts has shifted from symptom improving toward disease-modifying therapies for AD; that is, treatments whose aim is to affect the underlying disease process by impacting one or more of the many brain changes characteristic of AD. Many clinical trials of single-agent therapies have failed to affect disease progression or symptoms compared with placebo. The complex pathophysiology of AD may necessitate combination treatments rather than monotherapy. In addition, small molecules targeting neural stem cells (NSCs) regeneration represents a new drug discovery strategy.

TargetMol’s Anti-Alzheimer’s Disease Compound Library, a collection of 986 compounds with anti-AD activities or acting on main drug targets of AD, can be used for related drug discovery and pharmacology research.