Plant-derived compounds as potential neuroprotective agents in Parkinson's disease

Objectives: Current Parkinson's disease (PD) medications treat symptoms; none can slow down or arrest the disease progression. Disease-modifying therapies for PD remain an urgent unmet clinical need. This review was designed to summarize recent findings regarding to the efficacy of phytochemicals in the treatment of PD and their underlying mechanisms.

Methods: A literature search was performed using PubMed databases from inception until January 2024.

Results: We first review the role of oxidative stress in PD and phytochemical-based antioxidant therapy. We then summarize recent work on neuroinflammation in the pathogenesis of PD, as well as preclinical data supporting anti-inflammatory efficacy in treating or preventing the disease. We last evaluate evidence for brain mitochondrial dysfunction in PD, together with the phytochemicals that protect mitochondrial function in preclinical model of PD. Furthermore, we discussed possible reasons for failures of preclinical-to-clinical translation for neuroprotective therapeutics.

Conclusions: There is now extensive evidence from preclinical studies that neuroprotective phytochemicals as promising candidate drugs for PD are needed to translate from the laboratory to the clinic.