Positive allosteric modulators (PAMs) of the muscarinic acetylcholine M4 receptor show potential against schizophrenia because they can enhance endogenous acetylcholine signaling, which in turn may mitigate psychotic symptoms as well as improve attention and working memory in individuals with the disorder. However, the efficacy of a promising PAM, CVL-231, has been disappointing in clinical trials.

In idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, the lung tissue thickens and stiffens through proliferation of fibroblasts and invasion by inflammatory cells. One of the drivers of these processes is the enzyme autotaxin, which produces the signaling molecule lysophosphatidic acid. Several inhibitors of autotaxin have been reported, which show varying degrees of clinical potential.

Anti-inflammatory compounds can alleviate many acute and chronic diseases, including autoimmune, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative disorders. However, many such compounds increase risk of numerous adverse events because they inhibit not only cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), which induces pathological inflammation, but also COX-1, which is important for renal and gastrointestinal function.

Esophageal cancer is among the most lethal cancers with a high mortality rate worldwide. Chinese researchers have explored the potential link between long intergenic non-protein coding RNA 1354 (LINC01354) and esophageal cancer.

Myocardial ischemia-reperfusion (MI/R) injury is a major contributor to heart failure. The long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) myocardial infarction-associated transcript (MIAT) has been shown to worsen cardiac damage during ischemia, making it a promising target for RNA interference.

John Squires, the recently anointed director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, has determined that a machine learning (ML) patent application met the standard for patent subject matter eligibility, an outcome that seems to bode well for ML-based patent applications going forward.