Coumarin linked heterocyclic hybrids: A promising approach to develop multi target drugs for Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a major progressive and perplexing cortical degenerative disease of the brain in the elderly. It contributes to a significant socioeconomic burden on patients, families, and care providers in comparison to cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and stroke in general. Recently, a hybridized approach based on multi-target directed ligands (MTDLs) has received considerable attention to develop therapeutic agents for AD which act at multiple targets. Approximately 20% of the drugs approved in the past couple of years were developed using the same strategy and thus it seems to be the right approach to develop AD therapy. The comprehensive and updated review on coumarin hybrids as MTDLs in AD therapy is compiled using several electronic databases such as Scopus, Google Scholar, SciFinder, Mendeley, and PubMed. The research studies published on coumarin hybrids in the last decade (2010-2020) have been covered in this review article. This updated review highlights the importance of coupling (hybridization) coumarin scaffold with other bioactive pharmacophores to develop MTDLs for AD therapy. It also covers the patents granted to coumarin derivatives for AD treatment, natural products containing coumarin scaffold with anti-Alzheimer spectrum, the rationale for coupling pharmacophore fragments, detailed structure activity relationship (SAR), and molecular docking studies. The most potent and promising hybrid compounds have also been identified for further development of AD drugs. Authors are of the opinion that hybridization strategy would soon yield drug candidates for the treatment of AD. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.