REN and acute respiratory distress syndrome: In addition, we focus on the current knowledge of potential drugs targeting the cholinergic anti‐inflammatory pathway (CAP), sympathetic‐immune pathway, purinergic signalling, neuropeptides, and renin‐angiotensin system (RAS) at different stages from preclinical investigation to clinical trials, including the traditional Chinese medicine, as well as discuss their promising usages in treating ALI/ARDS (Figure 5 and Tables 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).