Abstract:
OBJECTIVE Network pharmacology strategy was applied to study the hepatoprotective effect and underlying mechanisms of Shenchai Granules(SCG).
METHODS The active ingredients of SCG were selected by the TCMSP and TCM Database@Taiwan, and the related targets of these ingredients were predicted by the Drugbank, GeneCards, TTD, Pubmed and PharmGKB database. The gene ontology, KEGG pathway analysis was performed by DAVID, protein protein interaction network of the targets and ingredient-target-pathway network of SCG were also constructed.
RESULTS Forty-nine ingredients were predicted from the SCG, 176 SCG ingredients related targets with hepatoprotective effect were screened from the database. Among the active ingredients, quercetin, kaempferol, baicalin, stigmasterol, β-sitosterol, oroxylin A, formononetin were the main ingredients. And ALB, IL6, TNF, JUN, AKT1, TP53, VEGFA, MAPK3, SRC, PTGS2 might be the main targets for protect effect on liver. The KEGG pathway enrichment analysis showed that SCG related targets were correlated with pathways including cancer, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, insulin resistance, TNF, HIF-1, FoxO, PI3K-Akt, ErbB signaling pathway ect. The ingredient-target-pathway network of SCG showed that the active ingredients of SCG acted with multiple targets, affected multi-pathways, interacted and coordinated with each other, and thus played a protective role in the liver.
CONCLUSION SCG serves as a multi-ingredients, multi-target, multi-pathway treatment for liver diseases. Network pharmacological study of SCG on hepatoprotective effect was expected to provide reference for the study of mechanism of traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of liver diseases.