Natural Compounds and Their Derivatives as Multifunctional Agents for the Treatment of Alzheimer Disease

Alzheimer disease (AD) is a complex and progressive neurodegenerative disease. AD is one of the greatest challenges to modern medicine because multiple pathogenetic factors are associated with this disease. The current pharmacologic treatment offers limited symptomatic benefits. Due to the multifactorial etiology, dedicated search for new molecules that can aim at multiple targets, including cholinesterase inhibition, amyloid-β antiaggregation activity, β-secretase and monoamine oxidase inhibition, nitric oxide releasing ability and interaction with cannabinoid (CB1, CB2), and N-methyl- d-aspartate or histamine H3 receptors, is an attractive prospect for the development of new anti-AD drugs. Considering that the presently approved drugs for the treatment of AD are mainly based on natural products, the search for natural products as anti-AD drugs has been considerably developed in the past two decades. This chapter is focused on natural compounds and their derivatives as potential multifunctional anti-AD agents. Among the reported phytochemicals and their derivatives, a good numbers of compounds seem to be promising candidates in the search for new therapies for AD.