“…The first generation of drug development for the cognitive deficits directly targeted the RAS-MAPK pathway, mostly by reducing abnormally enhanced RAS activity, and was remarkably successful in animal studies Lee et al, 2014;Li et al, 2005). Moreover, in clinical trials, FDA-approved statins, which showed beneficial effects in mouse models, were tested on neurobehavioral phenotypes in NF1 patients (Bearden, Hellemann, Rosser, Montojo, Jonas, Enrique et al, 2016;Krab, de GoedeBolder, Aarsen, Pluijm, Bouman, van der Geest et al, 2008a;Mainberger, Jung, Zenker, Wahllander, Freudenberg, Langer et al, 2013;van der Vaart, Plasschaert, Rietman, Renard, Oostenbrink, Vogels et al, 2013). Although small trials with lovastatin suggested beneficial effects of statins on cognitive function in NF1 patients (Bearden et al, 2016;Mainberger et al, 2013), large scale randomized placebo-controlled trials with simvastatin were not successful in showing efficacy against cognitive impairments (Krab et al, 2008a;van der Vaart et al, 2013), which suggests the necessity of developing next generation treatment strategies.…”