The long and the short of current nanomedicines for treating Alzheimer's disease

[摘要] Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder with complex pathologicalmechanisms and an increasing incidenceyear by year,[1] and the main manifestationsof AD patients are memory loss andcognitive dysfunction. Several drugscurrently approved by the US Food andDrug Administration (FDA) can onlyimprove the symptoms of patients withAD, but cannot delay the progression of thedisease or completely cure the disease.[2] Inrecent years, drugs screened for targetingAD pathology have shown good positiveresults in cell and animal models, but mostof them have failed in clinical trials.[3] Inrecent years, nanomedicine has developedrapidly, and nanotherapeutics can play arole in helping drugs to cross the blood–brain barrier (BBB) and for targeteddelivery and controlled release, providinga new treatment scheme for AD.