Exploring Molecular Mechanism of Huangqi in Treating Heart Failure Using Network Pharmacology

Abstract

Heart failure (HF), a clinical syndrome with a high incidence due to various reasons, is the advanced stage of most cardiovascular diseases. Huangqi is an effective treatment for cardiovascular disease, which has multitarget, multipathway functions. Therefore, we used network pharmacology to explore the molecular mechanism of Huangqi in treating HF. In this study, 21 compounds of Huangqi, which involved 407 targets, were obtained and reconfirmed using TCMSP and PubChem databases. Moreover, we used Cytoscape 3.7.1 to construct compound-target network and screened the top 10 compounds. 378 targets related to HF were obtained from CTD and GeneCards databases and HF-target network was constructed by Cytoscape 3.7.1. The 46 overlapping targets of HF and Huangqi were gotten by Draw Venn Diagram. STRING database was used to set up a protein-protein interaction network, and MCODE module and the top 5 targets with the highest degree for overlapping targets were obtained. GO analysis performed by Metascape indicated that the overlapping targets were mainly enriched in blood vessel development, reactive oxygen species metabolic process, response to wounding, blood circulation, and so on. KEGG analysis analyzed by ClueGO revealed that overlapping targets were mainly enriched in AGE-RAGE signaling pathway in diabetic complications, IL-17 signaling pathway, HIF-1 signaling pathway, c-type lectin receptor signaling pathway, relaxin signaling pathway, and so on. Finally, molecular docking showed that top 10 compounds of Huangqi also had good binding activities to important targets compared with digoxin, which was carried out in CB-Dock molecular docking server. In conclusion, Huangqi has potential effect on regulating overlapping targets and GE-RAGE signaling pathway in diabetic complications, IL-17 signaling pathway, HIF-1 signaling pathway, and so on to be a latent multitarget, multipathway treatment for HF.

A Bioinformatics Investigation into the Pharmacological Mechanisms of Sodium-Glucose Co-transporter 2 Inhibitors on Diabetes Mellitus and Heart Failure based on Network Pharmacology

“…Additionally, the pathway can also impact diabetic complications, as it leads to oxidative stress, increased in ammation, and enhanced extracellular matrix accumulation resulting in diastolic and systolic dysfunction [48]. Fukami et al proved that the activation of the AGE-RAGE signaling pathway in diabetic complications could cause excessive production of advanced glycation end products to hurt cardiomyocyte, leading to HF [49], which pointed that the AGE-RAGE signaling pathway in diabetic complications predicted in the study may mediate the progression of heart failure, as the same as the results of pathway analysis in another study [50]. Therefore, our results suggest that the 4 signaling pathways might be involved in the mechanisms of SGLT2 inhibitors affecting HF and DM.…”

Systematic Elucidation of the Mechanism of Quercetin against Gastric Cancer via Network Pharmacology Approach

“…The more negative the Vina score, the more stable the binding of the compound to the target. Furthermore, if the size of the cavity is close to or larger than the compound, the accuracy of docking will increase [ 23 , 25 ].…”

Exploring the Molecular Mechanism of Qing Guang An Granule in Treating Glaucoma Using Network Pharmacology and Molecular Docking

“…Therefore, the systematic evaluation method of network pharmacology has a good predictive effect in the study of TCM [ 9 ]. Molecular docking is a computational method that predicts the binding interaction of the small molecule ligands and the target proteins, and it can be applied to confirm and check the result of network pharmacology [ 10 ]. In this study, we aim to explore the relationships between QGAG and glaucoma through network pharmacology and molecular docking.…”