TNF and renal fibrosis: Zhang et al. found that pharmacological inhibition of MyD88 by LM8, a new small-molecule inhibitor of MyD88, could alleviate the progression of renal fibrosis by inhibiting the activation of NF-kB and reducing the expression of TNF-α and IL-1β in both streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic mice and db/db mice (Zhang et al., 2022).