Thursday, 12th July, 2012, 11:00-12:00

Multitarget strategies in the search of novel drug candidates for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a disruptive brain disorder characterized by a massive neuronal loss leading

to a progressive decline of cognitive function. The cause of AD is poorly understood. Several hypotheses have been proposed over the years to explain the disease and to identify relevant drug targets. It has been shown that AD is always associated with the formation of plaques (amyloid hypothesis) as well as with the deposition of neurofibrillary tangles (tau hypothesis).
There are few currently approved drugs, and these offer just a small benefit for a relatively short period of time. Nowadays, AD represents the largest unmet medical need in neurology.
Our approach to drug discovery in AD has been based on a radical change of the classical ‘one-drug one-target’ paradigm into a multitarget drug discovery approach.

In this seminar, two different series of molecules discovered following the multitarget strategy will be presented. The initial steps of our drug discovery strategy will be discussed, from structure-based drug design, carried out by means of computational tools, to chemical syntheses, and in vitro and in vivo characterization.

Speaker: Dr. Andrea Cavalli, Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), Genova, Italy

Room Xipre (seminar 173.06-183.01)