Uncovering the active compounds and effective mechanisms of the dried mature sarcocarp of Cornus officinalis Sieb. Et Zucc. For the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease through a network pharmacology approach

Abstract

Background: Shanzhuyu (the dried mature sarcocarp of Cornus officinalis Sieb. et Zucc., DMSCO) is a Chinese herb that can be used for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD), but its mechanism remains unknown. The present study aimed to investigate the active ingredients and effective mechanisms of DMSCO for the treatment of AD based on a network pharmacology approach. Methods: The active components of DMSCO were collected from the TCMSP and ETCM databases and the target proteins of these compounds were predicted using TCMSP, SwissTargetPrediction and the STITCH database. The AD-related target proteins were identified from the OMIM, DisGeNet, GEO and GeneCards databases. The network interaction model of the compound-target-disease was established and was used to obtain the key targets of DMSCO on AD through network topology analysis. Subsequently, gene enrichment in Gene Ontology (GO) and KEGG pathways were conducted using the David 6.8 online tool. Results: A total of 30 DMSCO effective compounds and 209 effective drug targets were obtained. A total of 172 AD-related genes and 37 shared targets of DMSCO and AD were identified. A total of 43 key targets for the treatment of AD were obtained from the topological analysis of the DMSCO-AD target network. These key targets were involved in a variety of biological processes, including amyloid deposition, apoptosis, autophagy, inflammatory response and oxidative stress and pathways, such as the PI3K-AKT, MAPK and TNF pathways. Three key compounds, namely ursolic acid, anethole and β-sitosterol were obtained from the analysis of the key targets.

Elucidation of active ingredients and mechanism of action of hawthorn in the prevention and treatment of atherosclerosis

“…These overlapped targets were entered into the STRING database (Szklarczyk et al, 2019) (https://string-db.org/) to construct the protein–protein interaction (PPI) network, and the required score was greater than 0.9. The data were exported in a TSV format, and analyzed via Cytoscape 3.8.2 (Qu et al, 2020). The plugin of “network analyzer” was used to calculate the topology parameters, including closeness centrality (CSC), betweenness centrality (BC), and degree, and then by two screening, the targets whose value were higher than the average value of these three parameters were regarded as the key targets (Zhou et al, 2019).…”

“…These overlapped targets were entered into the STRING database (Szklarczyk et al, 2019) (https://strin g-db.org/) to construct the protein-protein interaction (PPI) network, and the required score was greater than 0.9. The data were exported in a TSV format, and analyzed via Cytoscape 3.8.2 (Qu et al, 2020).…”

Acteoside and ursolic acid synergistically protects H 2 O 2 -induced neurotrosis by regulation of AKT/mTOR signalling: from network pharmacology to experimental validation

“…The relevant screening criteria and datasets selected in the GEO were previously described (Qu et al. 2020 ). All targets were unified as gene names by searching the UniprotKB database ( https://www.uniprot.org/ ) or STRING database ( https://string-db.org/ ) and selecting the species ‘Homo sapiens.’…”

The Pharmacological Mechanism of the Effect of Plant Extract Compound Drugs on Cancer Pain Based on Network Pharmacology

“…In this study, all the active ingredients of 11 herbal medicines of botanical origin were searched by TCMSP, ETCM, and TCMID [19,20]. e names of 11 traditional Chinese medicines, Astragalus membranaceus, Poria cocos, Honeysuicerae lonicerae, Radix Paeoniae lactiflora, Radix Bupleurum, Hedyotis diffusa, Scutellaria scleroides, Fructus Trichosanthis, Araceae aratidae, Radix Scutellariae, were input, and the main active components were further screened according to the oral availability (OB) ≥30% and drug-like properties (DL) ≥0.…”