HSPA5 and Intervertebral disk degeneration: Previously, DMF blunted the formation of chaperone-binding immunoglobulin protein (BiP/GRP78), an ER stress marker, in an intervertebral disc degeneration in vivo model and in vitro using human nucleus pulposus cells (Zhu et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2021) to support its ability to alleviate the ER stress response.