Abstract
Background Pinellia ternata (PT), a medicinal plant, has had an extensive application in the treatment of asthma in China, whereas its underlying pharmacological mechanisms remain unclear. Methods Firstly, a network pharmacology method was adopted to collect activated components of PT from Traditional Chinese Medicine Systems Pharmacology Database and Analysis Platform (TCMSP). Targets of PT were assessed by exploiting the PharmMapper website; asthma-related targets were collected from the OMIM website, and target-target interaction networks were built. Secondly, critical nodes exhibiting high possibility were identified as the hub nodes in the network, which were employed to conduct Gene Ontology (GO) comment analysis and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) signaling pathway enrichment analysis. Finally, the tissue expression profiles of key candidate genes were identified by the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database, and the therapeutic effect of PT was verified by an animal experiment. Results 57 achievable targets of PT on asthma were confirmed as hub nodes through using the network pharmacology method. As revealed from the KEGG enrichment analysis, the signaling pathways were notably enriched in pathways of the T-cell receptor signaling pathway, JAK-STAT signaling pathway, and cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction. The expression profiles of candidate genes including Mmp2, Nr3c1, il-10, il-4, il-13, il-17a, il-2, tlr4, tlr9, ccl2, csf2, and vefgα were identified. Moreover, according to transcriptome RNA sequencing data from lung tissues of allergic mice compared to normal mice, the mRNA level of Mmp2 and il-4 was upregulated (P < 0.001). In animal experiments, PT could alleviate the allergic response of mice by inhibiting the activation of T-helper type 2 (TH2) cells and the expression of Mmp2 and il-4. Conclusions Our study provides candidate genes that may be either used for future studies related to diagnosis/prognosis or as targets for asthma management. Besides, animal experiments showed that PT could treat asthma by regulating the expression of Mmp2 and il-4.
Highlights
Pinellia ternata (PT), a medicinal plant, has had an extensive application in the treatment of asthma in China, whereas its underlying pharmacological mechanisms remain unclear
On day 21, the mice were intranasally (i.n.) administrated with 100 μg OVA in 50 μL [8, 9]. e herb group was administrated with PT (1.95 g/kg/d) water decoction for 21 days, whereas the control mice were given the identical volume of phosphate-buffered saline (PBS)
Screening for the Active Component of PT. e 115 reported active ingredients of PT were retrieved from the TCMSP database. en, the values of oral bioavailability (OB) and drug similarity (DL) were employed to screen potential active components, and 13 of the mentioned bioactive ingredients were preliminarily screened out
Summary
Pinellia ternata (PT), a medicinal plant, has had an extensive application in the treatment of asthma in China, whereas its underlying pharmacological mechanisms remain unclear. Known as BanXia in Chinese, has been a common and potent medicinal herb in TCM practice. It has been clinically applied for suppression of the cough center to exert antitussive effects, facilitate cell division, decrease the viscosity of whole blood, and reduce inflammation, in conjunction with other herbs. A network pharmacological research was conducted to delve into practical components and action objectives of PT as an attempt to explore the underlying mechanisms of action of asthma treatment; the therapeutic effect of PT was verified by OVA-induced allergic mice, and the regulation of key proteins was examined (Figure 1)
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