Potential role of Drug Repositioning Strategy (DRS) for management of tauopathy.

Tauopathy is a term that has been used to represent a pathological condition in which hyperphosphorylated tau protein aggregates in neurons and glia which results in neurodegeneration, synapse loss and dysfunction and cognitive impairments. Recently, drug repositioning strategy (DRS) becomes a promising field and an alternative approach to advancing new treatments from actually developed and FDA approved drugs for an indication other than the indication it was originally intended for. This paradigm provides an advantage because the safety of the candidate compound has already been established, which abolishes the need for further preclinical safety testing and thus substantially reduces the time and cost involved in progressing of clinical trials. In the present review, we focused on correlation between tauopathy and common diseases as type 2 diabetes mellitus and the global virus COVID-19 and how tau pathology can aggravate development of these diseases in addition to how these diseases can be a risk factor for development of tauopathy. Moreover, correlation between COVID-19 and type 2 diabetes mellitus was also discussed. Therefore, repositioning of a drug in the daily clinical practice of patients to manage or prevent two or more diseases at the same time with lower side effects and drug-drug interactions is a promising idea. This review concluded the results of pre-clinical and clinical studies applied on antidiabetics, COVID-19 medications, antihypertensives, antidepressants and cholesterol lowering drugs for possible drug repositioning for management of tauopathy.

Editorial: Targets for Disease-Modifying Therapies in Alzheimer's Disease, Including Amyloid ß and Tau Protein.

Current treatments for patients with Alzheimer's disease aim to improve behavioral, cognitive, and non-cognitive symptoms. There have been no new drug approvals for preventing or treating Alzheimer's disease for more than two decades. Drug development in Alzheimer's disease aims to identify disease-modifying therapies that will delay or slow the clinical course of this disease. More than 50% of the current Alzheimer's disease drug pipeline now involves immunotherapies or oral small molecule agents. The most promising disease-modifying drug targets are amyloid ß and tau protein. In June 2021, aducanumab, a humanized recombinant monoclonal antibody to amyloid ß, was the first potential disease-modifying therapy approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment. Accelerated approval of aducanumab was based on the results of only one of two phase 3 clinical trials. Several clinical trials of targeted disease-modifying immunotherapies to the tau protein and amyloid ß that commenced before the current COVID-19 pandemic have been delayed. This Editorial aims to provide an update on past, present, and future disease-modifying therapies in Alzheimer's disease, including targeted therapies for amyloid ß and tau protein.