Designing In Vitro Strategies and In Vivo Models for Alzheimer's Disease - Promises & Challenges

Protein folding is a spontaneous self-assembly process, which occurs in the biological system. Understanding this complex process not only helps in deciphering the mechanism involved in protein misfolding diseases but also helps in modeling in vitro and in vivo systems for testing the therapeutic strategies developed for the disease. Among the protein misfolding diseases, much emphasis has been given to Alzheimer’s disease because of its prevalence among elderly individuals and propensity to cause external damage to neurons, an effective cure for which is yet to be designed. Though amyloid fibrils are the major cause of neurotoxicity in Alzheimer’s disease, their mechanism of self-assembly during pathological conditions is still under active investigation. This review aims to understand the basic mechanism of amyloid fibril formation and how it can be characterized in different stages by various techniques. With this information, it is possible to design both in vitro and in vivo systems, which not only serves as model systems for understanding the mechanism of amyloid fibril formation but also helps to test new therapeutic strategies against the disease. This review also highlights the pros and cons of currently available in vitro and in vivo systems, which can aid the readers to select a suitable system for their further studies.