Amphibian skin extracts as source of bioactive multi-target agents against different pathways of Alzheimer’s disease

Abstract

Natural products represent a rich source of bioactive compounds that have been historically used to obtain substances with great medicinal potential. The skin of anuran amphibians is a rich source of compounds with a wide range of biological activity. Alzheimer´s disease (AD) is a complex disease associated with all kind of different pathways, making their simultaneous modulation necessary. Nowadays anti-AD treatments are focused on enzymatic inhibitors. Here in we report the activity of skin extracts from nine species from Argentina, belonging to three anuran families, as inhibitors of AChE, BChE and MAO-B enzymes. The extracts also showed antioxidant activities, acting as multi-target on four important pathways of AD.