Abstract
Using Network Pharmacology to Explore the Mechanism of Huanglian Jiedu Decoction in the Treatment of Ulcerative Colitis
Department of Gastroenterology, First Affiliated Hospital of Hebei University of Chinese Medicine, Shijiazhuang, Hebei 050011, 1Department of Pharmacology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Hebei University of Chinese Medicine, Shijiazhuang, Hebei 050200, 2Key Laboratory of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine for Gastroenterology, Shijiazhuang, Hebei 050011, China
Correspondence Address:
Qiquan Liu, Key Laboratory of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine for Gastroenterology, Shijiazhuang, Hebei 050011, China, E-mail: liuqq56@163.com
The aim of this study was to identify the potential compounds, core targets and possible mechanism of Huanglian Jiedu decoction in treating ulcerative colitis based on network pharmacology and molecular docking. At first, potential compounds of Huanglian Jiedu decoction were retrieved from traditional Chinese medicine systems pharmacology. And then, the targets related to compounds and ulcerative colitis was obtained from traditional Chinese medicine systems pharmacology, Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man, GeneCards and DisGeNET. Next, Cytoscape was used to visualize drug-compound-common target-disease network and protein-protein interaction network. Moreover, gene ontology and Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes enrichment analysis was performed by database for annotation, visualization and integrated discovery to investigate possible mechanism of Huanglian Jiedu decoction against ulcerative colitis. At last, molecular docking verified the reliability of the prediction results. 55 compounds and 84 targets of Huanglian Jiedu decoction were screened out as potential players on ulcerative colitis. After network analyses, 10 core compounds (quercetin, kaempferol, wogonin, baicalein, acacetin, 5-hydroxy-7-methoxy-2-(3,4,5- trimethoxyphenyl) chromone, beta-sitosterol, moslosooflavone, 5,7,4'-trihydroxy-8-methoxyflavone, oroxylin A) and 10 core targets (interleukin-6, interleukin-1 beta, tumor necrosis factor-alpha, threonine-protein kinases, tumor antigen p53, prostaglandin-endoperoxide synthase 2, JUN, CXCL8, C-C motif chemokine 2, matrix metalloproteinase-9) were identified. Furthermore, the inflammatory response, tumor necrosis factoralpha signaling pathway, pathways in cancer, T cell receptor signaling pathway, toll-like receptor signaling pathway and nuclear factor kappa B signaling pathway may be involved in the treatment of ulcerative colitis using Huanglian Jiedu decoction. This study reveals that Huanglian Jiedu decoction contains multiple ingredients, multiple targets and multiple pathways in treating ulcerative colitis, which provides a basis for further research.
