Abstract:
OBJECTIVE To analyze the main chemical constituents of Tibetan medicine Duizialong Powder, and to investigate the mechanism of its treatment for rheumatoid arthritis(RA) by network pharmacology and molecular docking techniques.
METHODS UHPLC-Q-Exactive-MS/MS technique was used to analyze and identify the chemical constituents of Duizialong Powder, and the targets were obtained by uploading to the Swiss Target Prediction database, and then the targets of RA disease were identified by GeneCard database. Protein-protein interaction analysis was conducted by STRING database, enrichment analysis of GO function and KEGG pathway was conducted by METASCAPE database, and constructed the network diagram of constituent-target-pathway. In the above study, the mechanism of action of Duizialong powder in the treatment of RA was studied, and finally, the binding between the core constituents and proteins was simulated by molecular docking.
RESULTS A total of 57 chemical constituents of Duizialong Powder were identified by molecular ion peaks and secondary characteristic fragment ions, combined with literature and Compound Discover database. After uploading to the database, 165 constituent targets, 5081 RA disease targets were obtained, and 101 common targets were obtained by importing Venn diagram. KEGG pathway enrichment analysis revealed a total of 140 pathways(P<0.01). GO function analysis revealed that there were 1341 related to biological process, 79 related to cellular component, and 123 related to molecular function(P<0.01). The constituents-target-pathway network diagram of Duizialong Powder was constructed. Finally, molecular docking results showed that the core constituents(quercetin, quercetin-3-β-D-glucoside, isorhamnetin 3-glucoside, chrysoeriol, rutin) in Duizialong Powder showed strong binding ability with key targets(AKR1B1, PRKCA, VEGFA).
CONCLUSION Through UHPLC-Q-Exactive-MS/MS technique combined with network pharmacology, the pharmacodynamic material basis of Duizialong Powder is preliminarily revealed and the potential mechanism of anti-RA is predicted.