Dihydrosanguinarine based RNA-seq approach couple with network pharmacology attenuates LPS-induced inflammation through TNF/IL-17/PI3K/AKT pathways in mice liver

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Dihydrosanguinarine (DS) is one of the main chemical constituents of Corydalis bungeana Turcz. which demonstrates anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and antimicrobial in vitro. The present study aimed to investigate the anti-inflammatory effect and its underlying mechanism of DS in vivo. The network pharmacology method was used to predict the anti-inflammatory target of DS, and it was found that PI3K-AKT signal transduction pathway was the most obvious, and the anti-inflammatory effect of DS was more specific in liver. Herein, we used AKT inhibitor AZD 5363 to block PI3K-AKT signaling pathway, to carry out animal experiments to verify the predicted results of network pharmacology. The results showed that DS exerts protective effects on LPS-induced liver inflammation in mice, and the anti-inflammatory effect of DS was attenuated after inhibiting AKT. To elucidate the potential molecular mechanisms, we performed RNA-sequence analysis in liver tissues. Transcriptome analysis showed that the “TNF signaling pathway” and “IL-17 signaling pathway” had the highest enrichment of differentially expressed genes (DEGs). Then, TNF/IL-17/PI3K-AKT signal pathways were analyzed by GSEA. It was found that AKT3, CCL2, FOS, IL-17A, IL-17RA, IL-17RE, PI3KCA, TRAF3IP2, CREB5, ICAM-1, VCAM-1, IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α and CXCL1/2/3 were significantly regulated by DS. The results of RNA-seq immuneCC predictive showed that DS could inhibit the inflammatory response mainly by reducing the degree of macrophage infiltration induced by LPS. At the same time, we use RT-qPCR, IF, WB techniques to verify the core anti-inflammatory differential genes of DS at the gene and protein expression level, confirming that DS can regulate the inflammatory response by regulating the gene expression level of TNF/IL-17/PI3K-AKT signal pathway.We also used HPLC-Q-TOF/MS technology to explore the biotransformation products of DS in the blood and liver of mice under inflammatory conditions and established the docking model of DS and its transformed compound with TNF-α, IL-17A, AKT3 and IL-6, which is the key target from RNA-seq analysis in this study. The results showed that DS strongly interacted with four proteins in the form of prototypes and demethylated products and exhibited anti-inflammatory effects. Our research shows that DS exerts its anti-hepatitis effect mainly by inhibiting the excessive infiltration of macrophages in mice liver induced by LPS and down-regulating the expression of genes related to TNF/IL-17/PI3K-AKT pathway. This study provides a new perspective on the potential therapeutic application of DS and the plasticity of anti-LPS-induced liver inflammation in DS.