Active-component and integrative mechanism of Scutellaria barbata in treatment of cancer based on network pharmacology method / 中草药

ABSTRACT

Objective: To explore the active compounds and integrative mechanism of Scutellaria barbata in treatment of cancer by using network pharmacology. Methods: The active components were screened by five rules of durability. The target proteins of S. barbata were obtained by molecular docking. The main diseases related to S. barbata were obtained by Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD). Then, the compound-target-disease interaction network was built using cytoscape 3.40. After protein-protein interaction analysis, Biological Information Annotation Databases (DAVID) was used to analyze the biological metabolic pathway of target proteins. Results: A total of 72 compounds from S. barbata acted with more than 14 cancer-related targets, and diterpenoids including scutelinquninne D, barbatellarine E, and scutebarbatines A were the main active molecules of S. barbata. Network analysis showed that the active compounds of S. barbata can regulate VEGF signaling pathway, Fc epsilon RI signaling pathway, and FoxO signaling pathway through acting with the key targets protein, such as protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B), carbonic anhydrase 2 (CA2), cyclic protein dependent kinases 2 (CDK2), retinoic acid α receptor (RXRA) and so on. Finally, S. barbata regulated the process of inflammation and tumor angiogenesis for its anticancer effect. Conclusion: S. barbata can show the multi-target and multi-pathway synergistic antitumor activity through anti-inflammation and inhibiting tumor angiogenesis.