The need for effective therapy to treat Alzheimer 's disease is greater than ever, but there is still no drug therapy that can stop or reverse the progression of the disease. There is, however, a great deal of anticipation over the imminent development of effective therapies as a result of the identification of promising targets for drug development. This book investigates these targets and examines ongoing strategies to develop effective therapies for this devastating neurodegenerative condition.

Alzheimer s disease is a serious health concern in developed countries where the population is progressively aging. At the personal level the diagnosis of the disease represents a devastating scenario for both the sufferer and care givers. In recent years medications have been developed that mitigate somewhat the symptoms and delay, for a while, the progression of the disease. It is expected that in the coming years new medications will be developed that are capable of halting the chain of pathological events and symptoms of the disease. This book covers a wide range of the pharmacological mechanism underlying present and potential new therapies. The recent extraordinary advances in our understanding of the cell and molecular biology of Alzheimer s disease allows for an optimistic forecast of innovative therapies.

This book will be of value to a wide audience interested in cellular and molecular mechanisms leading to the pathology of Alzheimer s disease and on the multiple, possible, therapeutic opportunities ahead of us. The field of research is enormous and therefore therapeutic targets that have been selected for this volume seem the most hopeful and for which there is a solid rationale. There are a number of emerging therapeutic targets, such as the inactivation/removal of Ass peptides, amongst others, which might have potential applications if specific leading compounds were to be identified. "

This volume arose from the scientific program of the XIIth International Congress of Pharmacology, held in Montreal, Canada, July 24-29, 1994. The scientific program included plenary lectures and symposia, in addition to poster presentations and colloquia. The abstracts of the Congress presentations were published as .supplement 1 of volume 72 by the Cana dian Journal of Physiology & Pharmacology. The Congress organizers sought a more expansive treatment of the Congress proceedings and appointed Dr. A. Claudio Cuello to coordinate preparation of the present volume; Dr. Brian Collier was chair of the scientific program committee and, thus, also collaborated on this work. The objective that we pursued was to produce a volume of reasonable size which would feature all of the plenary lectures and symposia from those authors who agreed to participate. To this end, we solicited mini reviews from plenary lecturers and asked symposia organizers to coordi nate a single short-review covering the individual topics within their event. Those who accepted this challenge are evident in this volume. We express our gratitude to these authors for doing so, and for exercising considerable ingenuity in completing their task within a reasonable time."