Congo Red-Derived Carbon Dots as Dual Inhibitors of Tau and Aβ Aggregation in Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of senile dementia, with few effective treatments. AD pathology is characterized by extracellular amyloid plaques and intraneuronal neurofibrillary tangles. A promising drug discovery approach is to develop molecules capable of targeting both hallmarks of AD, by inhibiting Aβ and tau aggregation. In recent years, carbon dots (CDs) have emerged as novel drug nanocarriers with high biocompatibility, low cytotoxicity, and the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB).This talk will describe a new type of CDs, Congo red-derived CDs (CRCDs), synthesized using Congo red and citric acid as precursors. We will discuss how different mass ratios of the two precursors can produce CDs with different physicochemical properties. We will describe the successful synthesis of CRCDs which can cross the BBB in a zebrafish model. In addition, our synthesized CRCDs show the ability to inhibit both tau and Aβ aggregation. Our findings demonstrate that CRCDs can function as dual inhibitors for tau and Aβ aggregation, in addition to its capacity to cross BBB, enter the central nervous system (CNS), and to carry drugs. Thus CRCDs-based compounds may be a novel formulation component for the development of multi-functional AD therapeutics.