Anti-Tau therapies for Alzheimer's disease

The prevalence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is increasing and is estimated to reach 115 million worldwide by 2050. However, the current pharmacological armamentarium of AD treatments is limited to cholinesterase inhibitors and memantine. Anti-amyloid therapies had been a focus of drug development in AD, but none of the agents were able to demonstrate clinical utility in treating AD. Advances in neurobiology have implicated tau hyperphosphorylation in the etiopathogen esis of AD. In this article, we discuss the role of tau pathology in AD and potential pharmacological targets that include inhibition of tau aggregation, microtubule stabilization, tau immunotherapy, tau phosphorylation and O-GlcNAcylation and increasing tau degradation and clearance.