A recent study led by researchers at the Cornell University-affiliated Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) in collaboration with colleagues at Rutgers and Italy’s San Raffaele University and Research Institute, shows that aspirin’s main breakdown product, salicylic acid, blocks the protein, HMGB1, which could explain many of the drug’s therapeutic properties.The findings appear Sept. 23, 2015, in the journal Molecular Medicine.“We’ve identified what we believe is a key target of aspirin’s active form in the body, salicylic acid, which is responsible for some of the many therapeutic effects that aspirin has,” said senior author Daniel Klessig, a professor at BTI and Cornell University. “The protein, HMGB1, is associated with many prevalent, devastating diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, heart disease, sepsis and inflammation-associated cancers, such as colorectal cancer and mesothelioma,” he said.