Astrocyte: an innovative approach for Alzheimer's disease therapy

Alzheimer's disease is a devastating neurological illness with a high economic burden. The additional morbidity associated with social issues that arises along with the course of this disorder increases the need for a clear understanding of its etiopathogenesis thus allowing an implementation of novel pharmacological strategies. Despite astrocytes have been long described to actively participate in the regulation of brain circuits, available information is still poor. Even less information is available about their precise role in the pathogenesis of illness. Moreover, the scant knowledge about the astrocyte-neuron interplay in health and disease still hampers innovative discoveries. The focus of this review is to look for new and innovative pharmacological approaches against AD. In order to perform this, we used following keywords in PubMed search engine: astrocytes, therapy, Alzheimer’s disease, AD, treatment and glia in different combinations. With this review, we collected data available in literature describing how also astrocytes besides neurons might be new potential targets for drug discovery. Different approach currently being studied include modulation of glutamate transporters expression, astroglial genetic manipulation, free radicals inhibition, up-regulation of neurotrophins, and regulation of astrogliosis and neuroinflammation. Since several studies already demonstrated that astrocytes are definitely involved in AD pathogenesis, these cells can represent a promising new therapeutic target.