Title:Recent Progress Towards Vaccines and Antibody-based Therapies Against
Alzheimer's Disease
Volume: 21
Issue: 19
Author(s): Wenbo Ji, Baofeng Gong, Hong Jin, Xiaohan Chen, Peng Li, Wenbin Cheng , Yuchen Zhao , Bin He, Jianhua Zhuang*, Jie Gao*You Yin *
Affiliation:
- Department of Neurology, Changzheng Hospital, Navy Medical University, Shanghai, 200003, China
- Institute of
Translational Medicine, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444
- Department of Neurology, Changzheng Hospital, Navy Medical University, Shanghai, 200003, China
Keywords:
Alzheimer's disease, therapeutic vaccine, amyloid, tau, immunotherapy, targe drugs.
Abstract: Alzheimer's disease (AD), one of the progressive neurodegenerative disorders, is characterized
by clinical features such as memory loss, acquired skill loss, apraxia, and interpersonal and
social communication disorders. The AD hallmarks at the neuropathological level include intracellular
neurofibrillary tangles constituted by the hyperphosphorylated tau protein as well as the senile
extracellular plaques dominated by the amyloid-β (Aβ) deposits. At present, AD treatment that
mainly targeted towards improving symptoms and effective drugs to delay or stop disease progression
is lacking. Vaccines and antibody-based therapies are a type of natural, synthetic, and gene recombinant
biological product that treat or prevent disease progression by stimulating specific or
non-specific immune responses. Compared with traditional targeted drugs, vaccines and antibodybased
therapies have better safety and effectiveness and can even maintain the expression and stability
of Aβ and Tau proteins in patients for a long time. Logically, vaccines and antibody-based therapies
are somewhat different from traditional drugs because these drugs can achieve the therapeutic
effect of AD by activating immune cells and regulating the immune system of patients themselves,
thereby clearing disease-related proteins and long-term survival. Complete cure is also observed in
some patients after receiving the immunotherapy. Currently available vaccines and antibody-based
therapies mainly target Aβ and phosphorylated tau proteins. There are 44 vaccines and antibodybased
therapies for AD, among which nine drugs are discontinued, three drugs are inactive, eleven
drugs are in clinical phase 1, twelve drugs are in clinical phase 2, and seven drugs are in clinical
phase 3. Currently, no vaccines and antibody-based therapies have been approved for AD treatment.
In this paper, we review and analyse the research progress of vaccines and antibody-based therapies
that are used to treat AD.