Determining the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Syndrome with the Best Prognosis of HBV-Related HCC and Exploring the Related Mechanism Using Network Pharmacology

Abstract

Background. In traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), TCM syndrome is a key guideline, and Chinese materia medicas are widely used to treat hepatitis B virus- (HBV-) related hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) according to different TCM syndromes. However, the prognostic value of TCM syndromes in HBV-related HCC patients has never been studied. Methods. A retrospective cohort of HBV-related HCC patients at Shenzhen Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital from December 2005 to October 2017 was analyzed. The prognostic value of TCM syndromes in HBV-related HCC patients was assessed by Kaplan–Meier survival curves and Cox analysis, and the TCM syndrome with the best prognosis of HBV-related HCC patients was determined. To further study the relevant mechanisms, key Chinese materia medicas (KCMMs) for the TCM syndrome with the best prognosis were summarized, and network pharmacology was also performed. Results. A total of 207 HBV-related HCC patients were included in this research, and we found that HBV-related HCC patients with TCM excess syndrome had better OS. Then, a total of eight KCMMs for TCM excess syndrome were identified, whose crucial ingredients included quercetin, beta-sitosterol, kaempferol, luteolin, and XH-14, and KCMMs could play a therapeutic role through MAPK, JAK-STAT, Wnt, Hippo, and other pathways. Moreover, TP53, SRC, STAT3, MAPK3, PIK3R1, HRAS, VEGFA, HSP90AA1, EGFR, and JAK2 were determined as the key targets. Conclusion. We propose a new research method of “prognosis of TCM syndromes-KCMMs-network pharmacology” to reveal the prognostic value of TCM syndromes and the potential mechanism by which TCM syndromes affect prognosis.

LncRNA LINC00924 upregulates NDRG2 to inhibit epithelial‐mesenchymal transition via sponging miR‐6755‐5p in hepatitis B virus‐related hepatocellular carcinoma

“…HBV infection induces HCC by liver fibrogenesis, genomic instability, and the viral‐coded protein HBx dysregulation 4 . Currently, surgical and locoregional interventions, as well as medical therapy, including oral nucleotide analogs, Sorafenib, and Traditional Chinese medicine, are regarded as common anticancer therapies 5–8 . However, the morbidity and mortality of HBV‐related HCC continue to grow and the prognosis in patients with HCC remains unfavorable due to advanced‐stage diagnosis and limited therapeutic choices 9–11 .…”

“…4 Currently, surgical and locoregional interventions, as well as medical therapy, including oral nucleotide analogs, Sorafenib, and Traditional Chinese medicine, are regarded as common anticancer therapies. [5][6][7][8] However, the morbidity and mortality of HBV-related HCC continue to grow and the prognosis in patients with HCC remains unfavorable due to advanced-stage diagnosis and limited therapeutic choices. [9][10][11] Therefore, investigating the regulatory mechanism underlying the HBVrelated HCC progression is crucial to provide screening criteria for earlier clinical diagnosis, thereby improving the prognosis in patients.…”

Screening of HRas, RRas and FOS as Potential Pharmacodynamic Candidates for the Treatment of Hepatocellular Carcinoma

“…Drug-gene interaction on STITCH also validated that FOS has various indirect interaction with sorafenib and silibinin through number of proteins like HRAS, VEGFA, JUN (jun proto-oncogene) and PIK3CA (Fig. 5) which are key regulatory factors in hepatocarcinogenesis [39].…”

Information Extraction from the Text Data on Traditional Chinese Medicine: A Review on Tasks, Challenges, and Methods from 2010 to 2021

“…Information extraction (IE) techniques, an important part of natural language processing (NLP), have assisted automatic information acquisition from TCM texts and have been increasingly used in text mining in recent years [8,9]. By building large-scale and comprehensive structured data sets, TCM texts can be widely used in clinical applications such as information retrieval [10], computer-aided syndrome differentiation and diagnosis [11,12], and analysis of prognosis [13]. An example of extracting information from a clinical record of TCM is shown in Figure 1.…”