High mobility group box 1 protein (HMGB1), a highly conserved nuclear DNA−binding protein, is a late inflammatory cytokine that activates macrophages and dendritic cells to produce inflammatory cytokines, playing a key role in triggering the inflammatory response in the pathogenesis of ALI and sepsis (Deng et al., 2018; Li and Lu, 2021; Xie et al., 2021). Here, HMGB1 is linked to acute respiratory distress syndrome.