Abstract: A family of compounds of formula (I) wherein: X is one of the following radicals: which behaves as dual site acetyl-cholinesterase inhibitors and which are especially useful for the treatment of cognitive disorders as senile dementia, cerebrovascular dementia, mild cognition impairment, attention deficit disorder, and/or neurodegenerative dementing disease with aberrant protein aggregations as specially Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson disease, ALS, or prion diseases, as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or Gerst-mann-Straussler-Scheiner disease.

Abstract: The invention provides compounds of formula: which have a tacrine moiety connected to an heterocyclic moiety through a linker. Through careful selection of the substituents and the linker, the activity and selectivity towards acetylcholinesterase can be modulated. The compounds show potent AChE inhibition activities together with modifications in the ?-amyloid aggregation properties by binding simultaneously to the catalytic and peripheral AChE sites. They are useful in the treatment of AChE mediated diseases, such as the Alzheimer's disease.