scholarly journals Uncovering the Pharmacological Mechanism of Chaibei Zhixian Decoction on Epilepsy by Network Pharmacology Analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian Zhang ◽  
Chenglong Zheng ◽  
Siyuan Yuan ◽  
Xiaoke Dong ◽  
Le Wang ◽  
...  

Objective. Epilepsy is a neuronal disorder that is characterized by epileptic seizures and linked with abnormal neural functioning in the brain. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) formula Chaibei Zhixian decoction (CZD) has been widely used for epilepsy in China while the pharmacological mechanisms are still unclear. In the present study, systematic and comprehensive network pharmacology was utilized for the first time to reveal the potential pharmacological mechanisms of CZD on epilepsy. Methods. Traditional Chinese Medicine Systems Pharmacology (TCMSP) database and analysis platform was utilized for the development of an ingredients-targets database. After identifying epileptic targets of CZD, their interaction with other proteins was estimated based on protein-protein interaction network created from STITCH and gene ontology (GO) enrichment analysis utilizing Cytoscape-ClueGO plugin. Results. CZD formula was found to have 643 chemical ingredients, and the potential protein targets of these ingredients were 5230, as retrieved from TCMSP database. Twenty-six protein targets were found to be associated with epilepsy. Thirteen hub genes were regulated by CZD in epilepsy, including estradiol, ESR1, ESR2, SRC, CTNNB1, EP300, MAPK1, MAPK3, SP1, BRCA1, NCOA3, CHRM1, and GSK3B. The results of GO terms analysis showed that 8 GO terms were recovered in the form of 3 clusters, including negative regulation of protein kinase B signaling, positive regulation of interleukin-1 production, and microvillus assembly. Conclusions. Network pharmacology approach provides better understanding of the underlying pharmacological mechanisms of CZD on epilepsy. Estradiol, ESR1, ESR2, CTNNB1, EP300, MAPK1, MAPK3, BRCA1, and GSK3B are likely to be important molecules regulated by CZD in treatment of epilepsy. Negative regulation of protein kinase B signaling may play vital roles in the treatment of epilepsy by CZD.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiao-xiong Gan ◽  
Lin-kun Zhong ◽  
Fei Shen ◽  
Jian-hua Feng ◽  
Ya-yi Li ◽  
...  

Purpose:Prunella vulgaris (PV), a traditional Chinese medicine, has been used to treat patients with thyroid disease for centuries in China. The purpose of the present study was to investigate its bioactive ingredients and mechanisms against Hashimoto’s thyroiditis (HT) using network pharmacology and molecular docking technology to provide some basis for experimental research.Methods: Ingredients of the PV formula were retrieved from the Traditional Chinese Medicine Systems Pharmacology (TCMSP) database. Additionally, HT-related genes were retrieved from the UniProt and GeneCards databases. Cytoscape constructed networks for visualization. A protein–protein interaction (PPI) network analysis was constructed, and a PPI network was built using the Search Tool for the Retrieval of Interacting Genes (STRING) database. These key targets of PV were enriched and analyzed by molecular docking verification, Gene Ontology (GO), and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment.Results: The compound–target network included 11 compounds and 66 target genes. Key targets contained Jun proto-oncogene (JUN), hsp90aa1.1 (AKI), mitogen-activated protein kinase 1 (MAPK1), and tumor protein p53 (TP53). The main pathways included the AGE-RAGE signaling pathway, the TNF signaling pathway, the PI3K–Akt signaling pathway, and the mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling pathway. The molecular docking results revealed that the main compound identified in the Prunella vulgaris was luteolin, followed by kaempferol, which had a strong affinity for HT.Conclusion: Molecular docking studies indicated that luteolin and kaempferol were bioactive compounds of PV and might play an essential role in treating HT by regulating multiple signaling pathways.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Shengrong Long ◽  
Caihong Yuan ◽  
Yue Wang ◽  
Jie Zhang ◽  
Guangyu Li

Damnacanthus indicus C.F.Gaertnis known as Huci in traditional Chinese medicine. It contains a component having anthraquinone-like structure which is a part of the many used anticancer drugs. This study was to collect the evidence of disease-modulatory activities of Huci by analyzing the published literature on the chemicals and drugs. A list of its compounds and direct protein targets is predicted by using Bioinformatics Analysis Tool for Molecular Mechanism of TCM. A protein-protein interaction network using links between its directed targets and the other known targets was constructed. The DPT-associated genes in net were scrutinized by WebGestalt. Exploring the cancer genomics data related to Huci through cBio Portal. Survival analysis for the overlap genes is done by using UALCAN. We got 16 compounds and it predicts 62 direct protein targets and 100 DPTs and they were identified for these compounds. DPT-associated genes were analyzed by WebGestalt. Through the enrichment analysis, we got top 10 identified KEGG pathways. Refined analysis of KEGG pathways showed that one of these ten pathways is linked to Rap1 signaling pathway and another one is related to breast cancer. The survival analysis for the overlap genes shows the significant negative effect of these genes on the breast cancer patients. Through the research results ofDamnacanthus indicus C.F.Gaertn, it is shown that medicine network pharmacology may be regarded as a new paradigm for guiding the future studies of the traditional Chinese medicine in different fields.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tian Xu ◽  
Chongyang Ma ◽  
Shuning Fan ◽  
Nang Deng ◽  
Yajun Lian ◽  
...  

Ischemic stroke is accompanied by high mortality and morbidity rates. At present, there is no effective clinical treatment. Alternatively, traditional Chinese medicine has been widely used in China and Japan for the treatment of ischemic stroke. Baicalin is a flavonoid extracted from Scutellaria baicalensis that has been shown to be effective against ischemic stroke; however, its mechanism has not been fully elucidated. Based on network pharmacology, we explored the potential mechanism of baicalin on a system level. After obtaining baicalin structural information from the PubChem database, an approach combined with literature mining and PharmMapper prediction was used to uncover baicalin targets. Ischemic stroke-related targets were gathered with the help of DrugBank, Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM), Genetic Association Database (GAD), and Therapeutic Target Database (TTD). Protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks were constructed through the Cytoscape plugin BisoGenet and analyzed by topological methods. Gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment were carried out via the Database for Annotation, Visualization, and Integrated Discovery (DAVID) server. We obtained a total of 386 potential targets and 5 signaling pathways, including mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK), phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)/protein kinase B (AKT), hypoxia-inducible factor-1 (HIF-1), nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB), and forkhead box (FOXO) signaling pathways. GO analysis showed that these targets were associated with antiapoptosis, antioxidative stress, anti-inflammation, and other physiopathological processes that are involved in anti-ischemic stroke effects. In summary, the mechanism of baicalin against ischemic stroke involved multiple targets and signaling pathways. Our study provides a network pharmacology framework for future research on traditional Chinese medicine.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yinyin Wang ◽  
Hongbin Yang ◽  
Linxiao Chen ◽  
Mohieddin Jafari ◽  
Jing Tang

AbstractTraditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been practiced for thousands of years for treating human diseases. In comparison to modern medicine, one of the advantages of TCM is the principle of herb compatibility, known as TCM formulae. A TCM formula usually consists of multiple herbs to achieve the maximum treatment effects, where their interactions are believed to elicit the therapeutic effects. Despite being a fundamental component of TCM, the rationale of combining specific herb combinations remains unclear. In this study, we proposed a network-based method to quantify the interactions in herb pairs. We constructed a protein-protein interaction network for a given herb pair by retrieving the associated ingredients and protein targets, and determined multiple network-based distances including the closest, shortest, center, kernel, and separation, both at the ingredient and at the target levels. We found that the frequently used herb pairs tend to have shorter distances compared to random herb pairs, suggesting that a therapeutic herb pair is more likely to affect neighboring proteins in the human interactome. Furthermore, we found that the center distance determined at the ingredient level improves the discrimination of top-frequent herb pairs from random herb pairs, suggesting the rationale of considering the topologically important ingredients for inferring the mechanisms of action of TCM. Taken together, we have provided a network pharmacology framework to quantify the degree of herb interactions, which shall help explore the space of herb combinations more effectively to identify the synergistic compound interactions based on network topology.


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 ◽  
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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