:
Since the last century, when scientists proposed the lock-and-key model, the discovery of
drugs has focused on the development of drugs acting on single target. However, single-target drug
therapies are not effective to complex diseases with multi-factorial pathogenesis. Moreover, the
combination of single-target drugs readily causes drug resistance and side effects. In recent years,
multi-target drugs have increasingly been represented among FDA-approved drugs. Alzheimer’s
Disease (AD) is a complex and multi-factorial disease for which the precise molecular mechanisms
are still not fully understood. In recent years, rational multi-target drug design methods, which combine
the pharmacophores of multiple drugs, have been increasingly applied in the development of
anti-AD drugs. In this review, we give a brief description of the pathogenesis of AD and provide
detailed discussions about the recent development of chemical structures of anti-AD agents (2013 up
to present) that have multiple targets, such as amyloid-β peptide, Tau protein, cholinesterases,
monoamine oxidase, β-site amyloid-precursor protein-cleaving enzyme 1, free radicals, metal ions
(Fe2+, Cu2+, Zn2+) and so on. In this paper, we also added some novel targets or possible pathogenesis
which have been reported in recent years for AD therapy. We hope that these findings may provide
new perspectives for the pharmacological treatment of AD.