Table 3.

Therapeutic innovations and clinical trials in neurodegenerative disease treatments.

Therapeutic Approach	Molecular Target	Disease Focus	Therapeutic Agent(s)	Trial Phase	Key Outcomes	Cited Studies
Nanotechnology-based drug delivery	Blood–brain barrier penetration, tau/amyloid-beta targeting	Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s	Liposomal encapsulation, PEG-modified nanoparticles	Phase II (various)	Improved brain bioavailability, reduced plaques/tangles in animal models	Hajjo et al. (2022) [473], Saraiva et al. (2016) [474]
Stem cell therapy	Dopaminergic neurons, motor neurons	Parkinson’s, ALS	iPSCs, MSCs	Phase I/II	Motor symptom improvement, neuron survival post-transplant	Takahashi et al. (2007) [475], Glass et al. (2016) [476]
Gene therapy	SOD1, HTT, APOE ε4	ALS, Huntington’s, AD	Antisense oligonucleotides, CRISPR	Phase I/II	Reduced toxic protein levels, slower disease progression	Kordasiewicz et al. (2012) [477], Bennett et al. (2019) [478]
Pharmacogenomics	CYP2D6, COMT, APOE ε4	Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s	Genotype-guided dosing for existing drugs	Phase II/III	Reduced side effects, improved therapeutic outcomes	Singh et al. (2017) [479], Müller et al. (2015) [480]
Microbiome modulation	Gut–brain axis, inflammation	Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s	Probiotics, prebiotics, antibiotics	Phase I	Reduced neuroinflammation markers, improved cognitive/motor symptoms	Sampson et al. (2016) [481], Cattaneo et al. (2017) [482]