Neurodegenerative Diseases

With an increasingly aging population, neurodegenerative diseases-such as Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body dementia, frontotemporal dementia, and Parkinson’s disease-are becoming more prevalent in the world. This is an area of rapidly growing high-impact research as these neurodegenerative diseases are a huge burden for individuals, families, and societies both in quality of life and in healthcare costs. Finding novel therapeutic targets for neurodegenerative diseases is the premier medical challenge for this century. Classically each of these diseases has been viewed as a distinct entity with well-delineated clinical and pathological features. Recent research findings have revealed multiple commonalities across them; proteomic, genetic, cellular, and network mechanisms across neurodegenerative diseases. This conceptual revolution in our understanding of these neurodegenerative diseases as sharing unifying features is underpinned by underlying protein misfolding dysfunction and its consequences over time. As we search for new therapies and management of these neurodegenerative diseases, this book provides an effective source book of insights from experts that have played key roles in this conceptual revolution. Our goal is to enable better care of patients and to help build collaboration across research in multiple specializations that could help advance future insights and facilitate novel therapeutics.