The
pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are
manifested as an increase in the level of oxidative stress and aggregation
of the amyloid-β protein. In vitro, in vivo, and in silico experiments were
designed and carried out with multifunctional cholinergic inhibitor,
F24 (EJMC-7a) to explore its neuroprotective effects
in AD models. The neuroprotection ability of F24 was tested in SH-SY5Y
cells, a widely used neuronal cell line. The pretreatment and subsequent
co-treatment of SH-SY5Y cells with different doses of F24 was effective
in rescuing the cells from H2O2 induced neurotoxicity.
F24 treated cells were found to be effective in the reduction of cellular
reactive oxygen species, DNA damage, and Aβ1–42 induced neurotoxicity, which validated its neuroprotective effectiveness.
F24 exhibited efficacy in an in vivo
Drosophila model by rescuing eye phenotypes from degeneration caused by Aβ
toxicity. Further, computational studies were carried out to monitor
the interaction between F24 and Aβ1–42 aggregates.
The computational studies corroborated our in vitro and in vivo studies suggesting Aβ1–42 aggregation modulation ability of F24. The brain entry ability of
F24 was studied in the parallel artificial membrane permeability assay.
Finally, F24 was tested at doses of 1 and 2.5 mg/kg in the Morris
water maze AD model. The neuroprotective properties shown by F24 strongly
suggest that multifunctional features of this molecule provide symptomatic
relief and act as a disease-modifying agent in the treatment of AD.
The results from our experiments strongly indicated that natural template-based
F24 could serve as a lead molecule for further investigation to explore
multifunctional therapeutic agents for AD management.
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