Neurodegenerative diseases have emerged as one of the major age-associated diseases in recent years. Hence, the urge to understand the mechanism and to find targeted
therapeutics becomes inevitable.
Peptide-based compounds have emerged as one of the important tools for their
therapy. However, due to a lack of tolerability, specificity, and proteolytic degradation, they have lost their applicability in the broader sense. Thus, the search for suitable alternatives or
peptidomimetics becomes an important criterion for neurotherapeutics. One of the versatile
peptidomimetics is
N-substituted glycines or
peptoids, which retain many properties of
peptides but successfully evade the drawbacks of
peptides.
Peptoids are manifested with greater cellular permeability, less immunogenicity, and their ability to be administered intra-nasally. These properties enhance their potential as neurotherapeutics with respect to their
peptide counterparts. Recently,
peptoids have been explored for neurotherapeutic applications as aggregation inhibitors, cell signaling pathways modulators, and agents for inhibiting
inflammation via multiple mechanisms.
Peptoids, due to their versatility and low production cost, are becoming popular among
peptidomimetics as potential neurotherapeutic agents. In this review, the diverse applications of
peptoids with respect to
neurodegenerative disease have been explored.