Dementia is characterized by the impairment of cognition and behavior of people over 65 years. Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most prevalent neurodegenerative disorder in the world, as approximately 47 million people are affected by this disease and the tendency is that this number will increase to 62% by 2030. Two microscopic features assist in the characterization of the disease, the amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary agglomerates. All these factors are responsible for the slow and gradual deterioration of memory that affect language, personality or cognitive control. For the AD diagnosis, neuropsychological tests are performed in different spheres of cognitive functions but since not all cognitive functions may be affected, cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers are used along with these tests. To date, cholinesterase inhibitors are used as treatment, they are the only drugs that have shown significant improvements in the cognitive functions of AD patients. Despite the proven effectiveness of cholinesterase inhibitors, an AD carrier, even while being treated, is continually subjected to progressive degeneration of the neuronal tissue. For this reason, other biochemical pathways associated with the pathophysiology of AD have been explored as alternatives to the treatment of this condition such as inhibition of β-secretase and glycogen synthase kinase-3β. The present study aims to conduct a review of the epidemiology, pathophysiology, symptoms, diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer's disease, emphasizing the research and development of new therapeutic approaches.

Abstract:The Density Functional Theory (DFT) method and the 6-31G** basis set were employed to calculate the molecular properties of artemisinin and 20 derivatives with different degrees of cytotoxicity against the human hepatocellular carcinoma HepG2 line. Principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) were employed to select the most important descriptors related to anticancer activity. The significant molecular descriptors related to the compounds with anticancer activity were the ALOGPS_log, Mor29m, IC5 and GAP energy. The Pearson correlation between OPEN ACCESSMolecules 2014, 19 10671 activity and most important descriptors were used for the regression partial least squares (PLS) and principal component regression (PCR) models built. The regression PLS and PCR were very close, with variation between PLS and PCR of R 2 = ±0.0106, R 2 ajust = ±0.0125, s = ±0.0234, F (4,11) = ±12.7802, Q 2 = ±0.0088, SEV = ±0.0132, PRESS = ±0.4808 and S PRESS = ±0.0057. These models were used to predict the anticancer activity of eight new artemisinin compounds (test set) with unknown activity, and for these new compounds were predicted pharmacokinetic properties: human intestinal absorption (HIA), cellular permeability (P CaCO2 ), cell permeability Maden Darby Canine Kidney (P MDCK ), skin permeability (P Skin ), plasma protein binding (PPB) and penetration of the blood-brain barrier (C Brain/Blood ), and toxicological: mutagenicity and carcinogenicity. The test set showed for two new artemisinin compounds satisfactory results for anticancer activity and pharmacokinetic and toxicological properties. Consequently, further studies need be done to evaluate the different proposals as well as their actions, toxicity, and potential use for treatment of cancers.

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Aims: Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease accompanied by loss of memory and cognition. With its causes still unknown, one of the main hypotheses related to its pathogenesis is the amyloidal, where the abnormal metabolism of amyloid precursor protein (APP), in this case cleaved by β-secretase enzyme (BACE-1), generates sAPPβ, subsequent action of βsecretase generates β-amyloid. This gives the β-secretase importance as a therapeutic target of