Editorial [Hot topic: New Therapeutic Strategies for Treatment of Neurodegenerative Diseases (Executive Editor: Aleksey G. Kazantsev)]

Currently there is no cure for neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's diseases, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, and many others, which cause long-term suffering and ultimately death of patients. These devastating neurodegenerative diseases affect the lives of many thousands of patients and their families. Basic research on neurodegenerative disorders has revealed a highly complex picture of disease pathology in man. Over the past decades, numerous studies have demonstrated that the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative disorders appears to involve the recruitment of multiple biochemical pathways, but no single molecular mechanism has emerged as the major contributor to neurodegeneration. Furthermore, it has become evident that multiple genetic, environmental, and other factors - including aging - contribute to and modulate disease onset, progression, and severity. Given such complexity of neurodegneration, it is clear that diverse therapeutic strategies must employed and tested in experimental disease models, to identify those that show promise in preclinical trials. Over the years, therapeutic development has belonged almost exclusively to pharmaceutical and biotechnological companies. Recently, however, academic science has become more and more focused on various stages of drug discovery, complementing the R&D efforts of the pharmaceutical industry. Academic medicine is also highly capable of investigating and pursuing somewhat less traditional avenues of therapeutic development, an exercise that might be more constrained in an industrial setting. The goal of this review series is to introduce some of the diverse therapeutic strategies, concepts and advances toward clinical development that focus on neurodegenerative disease, and are currently taking place in academic laboratories.