Affiliations: [a] Department of Neurosciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
| [b] Division of Neurosciences and Molecular Neuropathology Section, Laboratory of Neurogenetics, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
Correspondence:
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Correspondence to: Eliezer Masliah, Division of Neurosciences and Molecular Neuropathology Section, Laboratory of Neurogenetics, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA. E-mail: eliezer.masliah@nih.gov.
Abstract: It has been a year since we lost Dale Schenk on September 30, 2016. Dale’s visionary work resulted in the remarkable discovery in 1999 that an experimental amyloid-β (Aβ) vaccine reduced the neurodegeneration in a transgenic model of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Following Dale’s seminal work, several active and passive immunotherapies have since been developed and tested in the clinic for AD, Parkinson’s disease (PD), and other neurodegenerative disorders. Here we provide a brief overview of the current state of development of immunotherapy for AD, PD, and other neurodegenerative disorders in the context of this anniversary. The next steps in the development of immunotherapies will require combinatorial approaches mixing antibodies against various targets (e.g., Aβ, α-syn, Tau, and TDP43) with small molecules that block toxicity, aggregation, inflammation, and promote cell survival.
