Potential molecular mechanisms of Huanglian Jiedu Decoction in treatment of atherosclerosis based on network pharmacology / 中草药

ABSTRACT

Objective: To explore the potential molecular mechanism of Huanglian Jiedu Decoction in the treatment of atherosclerosis (AS) through pharmacology network. Methods: By identifying all the composition and effect targets of four herbal ingredients in Huanglian Jiedu Decoction from TCMSP platforms and literatures, and the pharmaceutical molecular-target network was constructed. The interaction network of drug-disease target by STRING platform was constructed by screening AS related targets through TTD, DrugBank and DisGeNET databases. The centre targets were analyzed by network topology. DAVID database was used to perform GO biological process analysis and KEGG pathway enrichment analysis of centre target proteins, and further construct a multi-dimensional network relationship diagram of the active component-AS target-KEGG pathway of Huanglian Jiedu Decoction. Results: A total of 71 active ingredients and 165 potential drug targets were obtained according to the screening conditions (OB ≥ 30%, DL ≥ 0.18) and accessing literatures. The main active ingredients in Huanglian Jiedu Decoction included sitosterol, quercetin, berberine, dehydrotanshinone IIA and neobaicalein, which could interfere with the formation of AS. A total of 175 disease targets were collected from the three disease databases under the search criteria of “atherosclerosis”. According to Degree, 223 centre target proteins of Huanglian Jiedu Decoction were screened, mainly invovling NOS2, NOS3, PTGS2, TNF, CYP2C9 and HMOX1, et al. GO biological process analysis identified 50 entries based on false discovery rate (FDR) ≤ 0.05, mainly including SRP-dependent targeting membrane transporters, nuclear-transcribed mRNA catabolic process, viral transcription, rRNA processing, translation and other bioanalysis process. The result of KEGG enrichment analysis showed 74 pathways were associated with AS, mainly involved in ribosome pathway, viral carcinogenesis pathway, cell cycle pathway, estrogen signaling pathway, et al. Conclusion: Huanglian Jiedu Decoction can treat AS through multi-ingredient, multi-target and multi-pathway interaction, which provides a theoretical basis for the clinical application of Huanglian Jiedu Decoction and the basic or clinical research of AS-related diseases. Meanwhile, it has a certain reference value for the research and development of new drugs and its application.