Versatile nanomaterials for Alzheimer's disease: Pathogenesis inspired disease-modifying therapy

Current therapeutic strategies for Alzheimer's disease (AD) face the dilemma of no effective drugs that can delay the onset or slow the disease progression. Despite tremendous effort being involved, several anti-AD drugs come into clinical trials but with a moderate-to-poor success rate due to the complex AD pathogenesis and the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Insight into the complex AD pathogenesis is enabling new inspiration that have the potential to help improve our understanding and design of anti-AD nanomedicine. Herein, the complex AD pathogenesis and interaction between different therapeutic targets are summarized and highlighted, and key challenges facing translation of anti-AD nanomedicine from benchtop to bedside are discussed. Following combing through the complex pathogenesis and a contextual overview of clinical status of anti-AD compounds, we discuss the recent advances of exploring versatile nanomaterials in AD treatment from the pathogenesis. The focus here is especially on how to design pathogenesis-inspired nanomaterials for delivering therapeutics cross BBB and modulating the AD pathology by themselves as active ingredients. Collectively, this review highlights the pathogenesis-oriented nanomedicine design and provides with an easily accessible guide to the key opportunities and challenges currently facing the anti-AD nanomedicine.