Molecular Advances in Drug Discovery and Development for Neurodegenerative and Neuropsychiatric Disorders

Dear Colleagues,

Neurodegenerative disorders are recognized as a global health crisis. In addition, comorbid neuropsychiatric symptoms occur in many patients suffering from such disorders. To complicate matters, in the most recent three years since the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic began, the observation of so-called long COVID neuropathies (referring to lingering symptoms that persist or appear after the acute illness) has included depression, anxiety, concentration and cognitive impairments, psychoses, and even reports of frank neurodegenerative sequelae. Despite intense research efforts, no reliable drug treatment strategies have been found to be disease-modifying for neurodegenerative disorders or their associated neuropsychiatric symptoms. A recent analysis of data obtained from clinicaltrials.gov suggested that there are approximately 140 agents in ~170 clinical trials for Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) alone. Of these, disease-modifying therapies represent approximately 80% of the total number of agents in trials; symptomatic cognitive-enhancing treatments about 10%; while drugs for the treatment of neuropsychiatric symptoms comprise 7%. The complexity of disease pathways in these disorders offers significant challenges to drug discovery efforts, and it is not surprising that a diverse array of drug targets are represented by agents in these trials, with nearly 40% of candidate agents in the pipeline being repurposed drugs approved for other indications. The purpose of this Special Edition of the International Journal of Molecular Sciences will be to report on the most recent advances by leading experts in the discipline.

Prof. Dr. Cornelis J. Van der Schyf
Guest Editor

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• neurodegenerative diseases
• neuropsychiatric disorders
• drug discovery and development
• neuropathies
• clinical trials