Benzofuran and Indole: Promising Scaffolds for Drug Development in Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease with no clinically accepted treatment to cure or halt its progression. The Food and Drug Administration has approved drugs (e.g., rivastigmine, donepezil, galantamine, and memantine) that at best provide marginal benefits, thus emphasizing the urgent need to explore other molecular entities as future drug candidates for AD. Looking at the wide pharmaceutical applications of heterocyclic compounds and particularly those containing benzofuran and indole ring systems, these molecular frameworks have drawn special attention from medicinal chemists for further evaluation in numerous diseases. This article focuses on the history and recent advances of benzofuran- and indole-based compounds as inhibitors of butyrylcholinesterase, acetylcholinesterase, γ-secretase, β-secretase, tau misfolding, and β-amyloid aggregation.