A novel network pharmacology approach to analyse traditional herbal formulae: the Liu-Wei-Di-Huang pill as a case study

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 1014-1022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xujun Liang ◽  
Huiying Li ◽  
Shao Li

Understanding the mechanisms of the pharmacological effects of herbal formulae from traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is important for their appropriate application.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinyue Liu ◽  
Jinying Liu ◽  
Feng Xu ◽  
Runa Li ◽  
Lin Xing ◽  
...  

Abstract Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) not only maintains the health of peoples in Asia but also provides a great resource of active natural products for modern drug development. However, owing to its diverse constituents and the complex interactions with the human body, it is still challenging to clarify its effective constituents and molecular mechanism. This greatly hinders its widespread application worldwide and TCM-based modern drug development. The vast majority of constituents in TCM can produce pharmacological effects only after they are absorbed into bloodstream. Compared with ordinary constituents generally detected in vitro, these that are verified to reach the bloodstream, including original constituents absorbed into blood and metabolites of original constituents produced by the gastrointestinal tract, intestinal microflora, and liver, are more likely to be really effective ones responsible for the pharmacological effects. Here we developed DCABM-TCM (a Database of Constituents Absorbed into Blood and Metabolites of TCM), the first database systematically collecting blood constituents of TCM prescriptions and herbs, including prototypes and metabolites experimentally-detected in blood, together with the corresponding detailed detection conditions by manual literature mining. Currently DCABM-TCM has collected 4206 blood constituents of 192 prescriptions and 194 herbs, and also integrated various related annotations including physicochemical properties, ADMET properties, and associated targets, functional terms, pathways, and diseases etc. Furthermore, DCABM-TCM supported two analysis functions, the network pharmacology analysis for TCM molecular mechanism elucidation and the target/pathway/disease-based screening of candidate blood constituents, herbs or prescriptions for TCM-based drug discovery. DCABM-TCM is freely assessable by http://bionet.ncpsb.org.cn/dcabm-tcm/ and is browsable and searchable for each of 6 kinds of entities, including prescriptions, herbs, blood constituents, targets, pathways, and diseases. DCABM-TCM will contribute to not only the elucidation of effective constituents and molecular mechanism of TCMs but also the discovery of TCM-derived drug-like compounds which are both bioactive and bioavailable, the feature investigation of absorbable natural compounds, and the quality control of herbs.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Shuhan Zhou ◽  
Yanjun Duan ◽  
Yu Deng ◽  
Miao Wang ◽  
Chaoqun Huang ◽  
...  

Chronic gastritis (CG) places a considerable burden on the healthcare system worldwide. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) formulas characterized by multicompounds and multitargets have been acknowledged with striking effects in the treatment of CG in China’s history. Nevertheless, their accurate mechanisms of action are still ambiguous. In this study, we analyzed the effective compounds, potential targets, and related biological pathway of Lianpu Drink (LPD), a TCM formula which has been reported to have a therapeutic effect on CG, by contrasting a “compound-target-disease” network. According to the results, 92 compounds and 5762 putative targets of LPD were screened; among them, 8 compounds derived from different herbs in LPD and 30 common targets related to LPD and CG were selected as candidate compounds and precision targets, respectively. Meanwhile, the predicted common targets were verified by Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) signaling pathway analysis and pharmacological experiments. The results demonstrated that quercetin, ephedrine, trigonelline, crocetin, and β-sitosterol were major effective compounds of LPD responsible for the CG treatment by inhibiting the activation of the JAK 2-STAT 3 signaling pathway to reduce the expressions of cyclin D1 and Bcl-2 proteins. The study provides evidence for the mechanism of understanding of LPD for the treatment of CG.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhiqiang Liu ◽  
Bolong Wang

Abstract Background: Jianghuang (JH) is a popular ingredient in blood-regulating traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) that could be effective for the treatment of various diseases. We demonstrate the compatibility laws and system pharmacological mechanisms of the key formula containing JH by leveraging data mining of bioinformatics databases.Material/Methods: The compatibility laws of blood-regulating formulae containing JH from the Chinese Traditional Medicine Formula Dictionary were analyzed using a generalized rule induction (GRI) algorithm implemented. The putative target gene and miRNA were retrieved via a combination of the Arrowsmith knowledge discovery tool and FunRich 3.1.3. System pharmacological mechanisms are traced by their protein-protein interaction (PPI) network, and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis was conducted using Uniprot, the Human Protein Atlas (HPA), STRING 11.0, and KOBAS 3.0.Results: We found that the JH-CX-DG formula (Ligusticum chuanxiong-Angelica sinensis) could represent a key formula containing JH in blood-regulating TCM formulae. The JH-CX-DG formula was observed to directly target AKT, TLR4, caspase-3, PI3K, mTOR, p38 MAPK, VEGF, iNOS, Nrf2, BDNF, NF-κB, Bcl-2, and Bax 13 targets and regulate targets through 13 miRNA. The PPI network and KEGG pathway enrichment analysis showed that the JH-CX-DG formula possess potential pharmacological effects including anti-inflammatory, improving microcirculation, and anti-tumor through the regulation of multiple pathways including PI3K/Akt, MAPK, Toll-like receptor, T cell receptor, EGFR, VEGFR, Apoptosis, HIF-1 (p < 0.05).Conclusion: The JH-CX-DG formula can exert beneficial pharmacological effects through multi-target and multi-pathway interactions. It can be effectively administered for the treatment of inflammatory diseases, microcirculation disorders, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. We found a new effective drug formula through analyzing the compatibility law and systemic pharmacological mechanism of JH. Our study provides a theoretical basis and directions for subsequent research on the JH-CX-DG formula.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Wenchao Dan ◽  
Jinlei Liu ◽  
Xinyuan Guo ◽  
Boran Zhang ◽  
Yi Qu ◽  
...  

Background and Aim. Antineoplastic drug-induced cardiotoxicity (ADIC) becomes the second leading cause of death for tumor survivors after tumor recurrence and metastasis, and there may be great room for development in the future of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). However, the theory of anticardiotoxicity of TCM has not yet formed a system. This study aimed to explore the material basis and the rule of TCM against ADIC based on network pharmacology and data mining. Methods. The targets of antineoplastic drugs with cardiotoxicity were obtained from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database, China national knowledge infrastructure (CNKI) database, and Swiss Target Prediction platform. Then, the cardiotoxicity-related targets were derived from the Gene Cards, Disgenet, OMIM, and DrugBank databases, as well as the drug of current clinical guidelines. The targets both in these two sets were regarded as potential targets to alleviate ADIC. Then, candidate compounds and herbs were matched via Traditional Chinese Medicine Systems Pharmacology (TCMSP) platform. Cytoscape3.7.1 was used to set up the target-compound-herb network. Molecular docking between core targets and compounds was performed with AutodockVina1.1.2. The rules of herbs were summarized by analyzing their property, flavor, and channel tropism. Results. Twenty-one potential targets, 332 candidate compounds, and 400 kinds of herbs were obtained. Five core targets including potassium voltage-gated channel subfamily H member 2 (KCNH2), cyclin-dependent kinase 1 (CDK1), matrix metalloproteinase 2 (MMP2), mitogen-activated protein kinase1 (MAPK1), and tumor protein p53 (TP53) and 29 core compounds (beta-sitosterol, quercetin, kaempferol, etc.) were collected. Five core herbs (Yanhusuo, Gouteng, Huangbai, Lianqiao, and Gancao) were identified. Also, the TCM against ADIC were mainly bitter and acrid in taste, warm in property, and distributed to the liver and lung meridians. Conclusion. TCM against ADIC has great potential. Our study provides a new method and ideas for clinical applications of integrated Chinese and western medicine in treating ADIC.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Liping Sun ◽  
Dandan Wang ◽  
Yan Xu ◽  
Wenxiu Qi ◽  
Yanbo Wang

Pneumonia is a serious global health problem and the leading cause of mortality in children. Antibiotics are the main treatment for bacterial pneumonia, but there are serious drug resistance problems. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been used to treat diseases for thousands of years and has a unique theory. This article takes the treatment of pneumonia with Ephedra sinica as a representative hot medicine and Scutellariae Radix as a representative cold medicine as an example. We explore and explain the theory of treating the same disease with different TCM treatments. Using transcriptomics and network pharmacology methods, GO, KEGG enrichment, and PPI network construction were carried out, demonstrating that Ephedra sinica plays a therapeutic role through the NF-κB and apoptosis signaling pathways targeting PLAU, CD40LG, BLC2L1, CASP7, and CXCL8. The targets of Scutellariae Radix through the IL-17 signaling pathway are MMP9, CXCL8, and MAPK14. Molecular docking technology was also used to verify the results. In short, our results provide evidence for the theory of treating the same disease with different treatments, and we also discuss future directions for traditional Chinese medicine.


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