Molecular Mechanism of Belamcandae Rhizoma and Ephedrae Herba Couplet Medicines in Treating Asthma Based on Network Pharmacology / 中国实验方剂学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To analyze the effective active ingredients of Belamcandae Rhizoma and Ephedrae Herba couplet medicines(BREH)in the treatment of bronchial asthma based on network pharmacology, in order to predict their potential targets and explore the mechanism. Method:Active ingredients and predict their targets were collected from traditional Chinese medicine system pharmacology(TCMSP) database. Drugs-components-targets network and Proteins interations network were built by STRING database and Cytoscape software. ClusterProfiler and ClueGO was used to enrich the biological function and metabolic pathway of core targets. Finally, candidate targets were mapped onto the pictures of correlative pathways. Result:The 38 effectively active ingredients were screened out, including luteolin, stigmasterol, diosmetin, naringenin, quercetin, iristectorigenin A, isorhamnetin. There were 214 candidate targets relating to bronchial asthma, and 55 core ones were selected to be mainly studied, including RAC-alpha serine/threonine-protein kinase (Akt1), tumor necrosis factor (TNF), mitogen-activated protein kinase 1 (MAPK1), vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGFA), interleukin-10 (IL-10), NF-kappa-B inhibitor alpha (NFKBIA), and a number of relevant gene ontology(GO) functions and Kyoto Encyclopedin of Genes and Genomes(KEGG) pathways were enriched. Conclusion:BREH may regulate the Th1, Th2 and Th17 cell differentiations, Asthma, IL-17, phosphatidylinositol-3-kinases(PI3K)/Akt, MAPK, NF-κB, VEGF signaling pathways, so as to interfere the process of cell metabolism, and inhibit gene expression of proinflammatory factor in the treatment of bronchial asthma.