Neurodegenerative disorders affect 55 million people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Most of these pathologies share the onset of dementia. Disability caused by dementia increases dramatically with aging, and the incidence rate is doubling every five years after the age of 65. Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is the major cause of dementia in Western countries, accounting for 60 to 80% of cases. As the average age of the population increases, the number of cases of AD is expected to be more than triple by 2050, reaching over 150 million. Although huge efforts have been made to solve the problem, current pharmacological therapies are only symptomatic, but they do not stop the progression of dementia. Altogether, the development of a treatment or cure for AD, preferably able to affect the course of the disease to prevent, or at least delay the onset of cognitive decline, represents an unmet medical, social, and economic need. AD drug development must be accelerated.
Epigenetics plays an important role in several disease pathophysiology’s and has been validated as a target for several diseases including cancer, inflammation, and neurodegenerative disorders. Furthermore, several lines of evidence suggest a role for epigenetic processes in learning and memory and cognitive disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease - identifying epigenetic alterations as a primary cause of cognitive impairment. Therefore, targeting the epigenome may represent a preventative and/or therapeutic approach for alleviating cognitive abnormalities associated with neurodegeneration. Finally, epigenetic neuropharmacology is a new and exiting field, which shows that pharmacotherapies based on epigenetic enzymes change the brain epigenome, improving the neurodegenerative events. Therefore, the main goal of this collection is to describe new neuroepigenetic targets and promising pharmacological therapies for neurodegenerative disorders.
We welcome the contribution and submission of any article and findings in the area of epigenetic neuropharmacology research.
The editors welcome the following article types to this collection:
-Research Article
-Systematic Review
-Review Article
-Mini Review
