Identifying potential pharmacological targets and mechanisms of vitamin D for hepatocellular carcinoma and COVID-19.
Front Immunol
; 13: 985781, 2022.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-2022758
ABSTRACT
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a severe pandemic that has posed an unprecedented challenge to public health worldwide. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a common digestive system malignancy, with high aggressiveness and poor prognosis. HCC patients may be vulnerable to COVID-19. Since the anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory and antiviral effects of vitamin D, we aimed to investigate the possible therapeutic effects and underlying action mechanisms of vitamin D in COVID-19 and HCC in this study. By using a range of bioinformatics and network pharmacology analyses, we identified many COVID-19/HCC target genes and analyzed their prognostic significance in HCC patients. Further, a risk score model with good predictive performance was developed to evaluate the prognosis of HCC patients with COVID-19 based on these target genes. Moreover, we identified seven possible pharmacological targets of vitamin D against COVID-19/HCC, including HMOX1, MB, TLR4, ALB, TTR, ACTA1 and RBP4. And we revealed the biological functions, signaling pathways and TF-miRNA coregulatory network of vitamin D in COVID-19/HCC. The enrichment analysis revealed that vitamin D could help in treating COVID-19/HCC effects through regulation of immune response, epithelial structure maintenance, regulation of chemokine and cytokine production involved in immune response and anti-inflammatory action. Finally, the molecular docking analyses were performed and showed that vitamin D possessed effective binding activity in COVID-19. Overall, we revealed the possible molecular mechanisms and pharmacological targets of vitamin D for treating COVID-19/HCC for the first time. But these findings need to be further validated in actual HCC patients with COVID-19 and need further investigation to confirm.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Carcinoma, Hepatocellular
/
MicroRNAs
/
COVID-19
/
COVID-19 Drug Treatment
/
Liver Neoplasms
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Prognostic study
Topics:
Long Covid
Limits:
Humans
Language:
English
Journal:
Front Immunol
Year:
2022
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Fimmu.2022.985781
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