Discerning the Prospects of miRNAs as a Multi-Target Therapeutic and Diagnostic for Alzheimer's Disease.

Although over the last few decades, numerous attempts have been made to halt Alzheimer's disease (AD) progression and mitigate its symptoms, only a few have been proven beneficial. Most medications available, still only cater to the symptoms of the disease rather than fixing the cause at the root level. A novel approach involving the use of miRNAs, which work on the principle of gene silencing, is being explored by scientists. Naturally present miRNAs in the biological system help to regulate various genes than may be implicated in AD-like BACE-1 and APP. One miRNA thus, holds the power to keep a check on several genes, conferring it the ability to be used as a multi-target therapeutic. With aging and the onset of diseased pathology, dysregulation of these miRNAs is observed. This flawed miRNA expression is responsible for the unusual buildup of amyloid proteins, fibrillation of tau proteins in the brain, neuronal death and other hallmarks leading to AD. The use of miRNA mimics and miRNA inhibitors provides an attractive perspective for fixing the upregulation and downregulation of miRNAs that led to abnormal cellular activities. Furthermore, the detection of miRNAs in the CSF and serum of diseased patients might be considered an earlier biomarker for the disease. While most of the therapies designed around AD have not succeeded completely, the targeting of dysregulated miRNAs in AD patients might give a new direction to scholars to develop an effective treatment for Alzheimer's disease.