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Small Molecule Drugs Targeting Non-Coding RNAs as Treatments for Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias.

ABSTRACT: Despite the enormous burden of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) on patients, caregivers, and society, only a few treatments with limited efficacy are currently available. While drug development conventionally focuses on disease-associated proteins, RNA has recently been shown to be druggable for therapeutic purposes as well. Approximately 70% of the human genome is transcribed into non-protein-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) such as microRNAs, long ncRNAs, and circular RNAs, which can adopt diverse structures and cellular functions. Many ncRNAs are specifically enriched in the central nervous system, and their dysregulation is implicated in ADRD pathogenesis, making them attractive therapeutic targets. In this review, we first detail why targeting ncRNAs with small molecules is a promising therapeutic strategy for ADRD. We then outline the process from discovery to validation of small molecules targeting ncRNAs in preclinical studies, with special emphasis on primary high-throughput screens for identifying lead compounds. Screening strategies for specific ncRNAs will also be included as examples. Key challenges-including selecting appropriate ncRNA targets, lack of specificity of small molecules, and general low success rate of neurological drugs and how they may be overcome-will be discussed throughout the review.

SUBMITTER: Nguyen LD

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8701955 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Currently, more than 55 million people around the world suffer from dementia, and Alzheimer's disease-related dementia (ADRD) accounts for nearly 60-70% of all those cases. The spread of AD pathology and progressive neurodegeneration in the hippocampus and cerebral cortex is strongly correlated with cognitive decline in AD patients; however, the molecular underpinning of the ADRD causality is still unclear. Studies of postmortem AD brains and animal models of AD suggest that elevated endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress may have a role in ADRD pathology through altered neurocellular homeostasis in brain regions associated with learning and memory. To study the ER stress-associated neurocellular response and its effects on neurocellular homeostasis and neurogenesis, we modeled an ER stress challenge using Thapsigargin (TG), a specific inhibitor of sarco/endoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ ATPase (SERCA), in induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived neural stem cells (NSCs) of two individuals from our Mexican American Family Study (MAFS). High-content screening and transcriptomic analysis of the control and ER stress-challenged NSCs showed that NSC’s ER stress response resulted in a significant decline in NSC self-renewal and an increase in apoptosis and cellular oxidative stress. A total of 2300 genes were significantly (moderated t statistics FDR corrected p-value ≤ 0.05 and Fold Change absolute ≥ 2.0) differentially expressed (DE). Pathway enrichment and gene network analysis of DE genes suggests that all three unfolded protein response (UPR) pathways (PERK, IRE1, and ATF6) were significantly activated and cooperatively regulated the NSC’s transcriptional response to ER stress. Our results show that IRE1/XBP1 mediated transcriptional regulation of E2F1 and its downstream targets have a dominant role in inducing G1/S-phase cell cycle arrest in the ER stress-challenged NSCs. The ER stress-challenged NSCs also showed activation of CHOP-mediated apoptosis and dysregulation of synaptic plasticity and neurotransmitter homeostasis-associated genes. Overall, our results suggest that ER stress-associated attenuation of NSC self-renewal, increased apoptosis, and dysregulated synaptic plasticity and neurotransmitter homeostasis plausibly play a role in the causation of ADRD.

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Small Molecule Drugs Targeting Non-Coding RNAs as Treatments for Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias.

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