Our previous studies in EC identified the STAT family of transcription factors, STAT5a/b and STAT3, to be significant contributors to regulation of mechanical stress-induced transcriptional activity, similar to what we have described for promoter responses to the critical damage-associated molecular pattern proteins (DAMPs), NAMPT [4,35,63–65], and HMGB1 [66], each serving as key DAMPs in ARDS and as viable ARDS/VILI therapeutic targets. Here, HMGB1 is linked to acute respiratory distress syndrome.