Emerging Promise of Immunotherapy for Alzheimer's Disease: A New Hope for the Development of Alzheimer's Vaccine.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a chronic neurodegenerative disorder and the characteristics of this devastating disorder include the progressive and disabling deficits in the cognitive functions including reasoning, attention, judgment, comprehension, memory, and language. OBJECTIVE: In this article, we have focused on the recent progress that has been achieved in the development of an effective AD vaccine. SUMMARY: Currently, available treatment options of AD are limited to deliver short-term symptomatic relief only. A number of strategies targeting amyloid-beta (Aß) have been developed in order to treat or prevent AD. In order to exert an effective immune response, an AD vaccine should contain adjuvants that can induce an effective anti-inflammatory T helper 2 (Th2) immune response. AD vaccines should also possess the immunogens which have the capacity to stimulate a protective immune response against various cytotoxic Aß conformers. The induction of an effective vaccine's immune response would necessitate the parallel delivery of immunogen to dendritic cells (DCs) and their priming to stimulate a Th2-polarized response. The aforesaid immune response is likely to mediate the generation of neutralizing antibodies against the neurotoxic Aß oligomers (AßOs) and also anti-inflammatory cytokines, thus preventing the AD-related inflammation. CONCLUSION: Since there is an age-related decline in the immune functions, therefore vaccines are more likely to prevent AD instead of providing treatment. AD vaccines might be an effective and convenient approach to avoid the treatment-related huge expense.