Therapeutic Potential of Natural Compounds in Neurodegenerative Diseases: Insights from Clinical Trials.

Neurodegenerative diseases are caused by the gradual loss of neurons' function. These neurological illnesses remain incurable, and current medicines only alleviate the symptoms. Given the social and economic burden caused by the rising frequency of neurodegenerative diseases, there is an urgent need for the development of appropriate therapeutics. Natural compounds are gaining popularity as alternatives to synthetic drugs due to their neuroprotective properties and higher biocompatibility. While natural compounds' therapeutic effects for neurodegenerative disease treatment have been investigated in numerous in vitro and in vivo studies, only few have moved to clinical trials. This article provides the first systematic review of the clinical trials evaluating natural compounds' safety and efficacy for the treatment of the five most prevalent neurodegenerative disorders: Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and Huntington's disease.

The current state of amyloidosis therapeutics and the potential role of fluorine in their treatment.

Amyloidosis, commonly known as amyloid-associated diseases, is characterized by improperly folded proteins accumulating in tissues and eventually causing organ damage, which is linked to several disorders ranging from neurodegenerative to peripheral diseases. It has an enormous societal and financial impact on the global health sector. Due to the complexity of protein misfolding and intertwined aggregation, there are no effective disease-modifying medications at present, and the condition is likely mis/non-diagnosed half of the time. Nonetheless, over the last two decades, substantial research into aggregation processes has revealed the possibilities of new intervention approaches. On the other hand, fluorine has been a rising star in therapeutic development for numerous neurodegenerative illnesses and other peripheral diseases. In this study, we revised and emphasized the possible significance of fluorine-modified therapeutic molecules and fluorine-modified nanoparticles (NPs) in the modulation of amyloidogenic proteins, including insulin, amyloid beta peptide (Aß), prion protein (PrP), transthyretin (TTR) and Huntingtin (htt).

Fluorinated Molecules and Nanotechnology: Future 'Avengers' against the Alzheimer's Disease?

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a serious health concern, affecting millions of people globally, which leads to cognitive impairment, dementia, and inevitable death. There is still no medically accepted treatment for AD. Developing therapeutic treatments for AD is an overwhelming challenge in the medicinal field, as the exact mechanics underlying its devastating symptoms is still not completely understood. Rather than the unknown mechanism of the disease, one of the limiting factors in developing new drugs for AD is the blood-brain barrier (BBB). A combination of nanotechnology with fluorinated molecules is proposed as a promising therapeutic treatment to meet the desired pharmacokinetic/physiochemical properties for crossing the BBB passage. This paper reviews the research conducted on fluorine-containing compounds and fluorinated nanoparticles (NPs) that have been designed and tested for the inhibition of amyloid-beta (Aß) peptide aggregation. Additionally, this study summarizes fluorinated molecules and NPs as promising agents and further future work is encouraged to be effective for the treatment of AD.