Abstract:During the last two decades， the story of vigorous curcumin R&D from activity assay to pre-clinical and clinical trials for Alzheimer’s disease and to final failure represents a chaotic thinking on pharmaceutical drug development. The research goals of pharmacologically involved compounds are usually as follows: to observe and record the activity spectrum of synthesized or isolated molecules; to advance drug candidate development based on activity，pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic data; to study the mechanism of action of druggable compound; and to participate in the basic biomedical research with the compound as a tool after the mechanism has been well known. Therefore， to avoid the waste of research resources and time，it is necessary for people to set up a clear goal，compare the chemical structures and exhaustively review the literature before a compound is going to be studied.

Key words:curcumin,Alzheimer&,rsquo,s disease,activity,pharmacodynamics,mechanism,druggability