C9orf72 and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: In particular, the use of ligands to bind G4s has been shown to ameliorate ALS phenotypes in neuronal cells10,19,20,22 and targeting of the hairpin with a small molecule inhibited repeat-associated non-ATG (RAN) translation and subsequent generation of toxic dipeptide repeats from the C9orf72 gene mutation11.