Bioinformatics-based Prediction of the mechanism and targets for BushenjieduDecoction in preventing relapse of acute leukemia

Abstract

Background: Leukemia is a lethal myeloproliferative disorder, its’ relapse following chemotherapy is the major concern in clinical practice. For a long time, we found that traditional Chinese medicines such as Bushenjiedudecoction (BSJD) have significant effects on delaying relapse. However, the underlying mechanisms are not clear, which limits the clinical application of BSJD decoction. Methods: Therefore, we tried to make some explorations in this study. We isolated mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) after treated them with BSJD for proteomic analysis. And then 109 targets were screened out through analysis of the shared proteins of that affected by BSJD and those related to leukemia. Subsequently, the data were analyzed by GO functions, KEGG pathways, PPI network and topological analysis, and then some nodes were selected for animal experiment. Results: As a result, we demonstrated the effective targets of BSJD on MSC through bioinformatics analysis and explored the potential mechanism of BSJD from its influence on niches.These targets contains Hspb1、Dnmt1、Mmp2、Thbs1、Crebbp、Hmgb1、Acta2、Cdkn1b、Atg7、Tsc2 and Icam1. Afterwards, we confirmed BSJD reduced the gene expression of ICAM-1 through cultured MSC in vitro.Conclusions: We screened the potential targets of BSJD on MSC through proteomics and bioinformatics analysis, and selected some genes for experimental verification. These studies demonstrated the effect of BSJD on MSC. We hope that this research method could provide a new way of systematically studying the effects of traditional Chinese medicine on diseases.