P2X7 activation can cause cell death and is linked to the pathogenesis of several major disorders, including inflammatory pain (Inoue and Tsuda, 2021), autoimmune diseases (Cao et al., 2019), tumor progression (Kan et al., 2019; Douguet et al., 2021), psychiatric conditions (Huang and Tan, 2021), anxiety-like behavior (Huang et al., 2024), and neurodegenerative diseases (Volonté et al., 2012; Martin et al., 2019), making P2X7 a clinically relevant target. The gene discussed is P2RX7; the disease is neurodegenerative disease.