Abstract
Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers endangering women's health all over the world. Traditional Chinese medicine is increasingly recognized as a possible complementary and alternative therapy for breast cancer. Chaihu-Shugan-San is a traditional Chinese medicine prescription, which is extensively used in clinical practice. Its therapeutic effect on breast cancer has attracted extensive attention, but its mechanism of action is still unclear. In this study, we explored the molecular mechanism of Chaihu-Shugan-San in the treatment of breast cancer by network pharmacology. The results showed that 157 active ingredients and 8074 potential drug targets were obtained in the TCMSP database according to the screening conditions. 2384 disease targets were collected in the TTD, OMIM, DrugBank, GeneCards disease database. We applied the Bisogenet plug-in in Cytoscape 3.7.1 to obtain 451 core targets. The biological process of gene ontology (GO) involves the mRNA catabolic process, RNA catabolic process, telomere organization, nucleobase-containing compound catabolic process, heterocycle catabolic process, and so on. In cellular component, cytosolic part, focal adhesion, cell-substrate adherens junction, and cell-substrate junction are highly correlated with breast cancer. In the molecular function category, most proteins were addressed to ubiquitin-like protein ligase binding, protein domain specific binding, and Nop56p-associated pre-rRNA complex. Besides, the results of the KEGG pathway analysis showed that the pathways mainly involved in apoptosis, cell cycle, transcriptional dysregulation, endocrine resistance, and viral infection. In conclusion, the treatment of breast cancer by Chaihu-Shugan-San is the result of multicomponent, multitarget, and multipathway interaction. This study provides a certain theoretical basis for the treatment of breast cancer by Chaihu-Shugan-San and has certain reference value for the development and application of new drugs.
Highlights
Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers endangering women’s health all over the world. e GLOBOCAN 2018 statistics show alarming results that there are 8.6 million new cases of female cancer and 4.2 million female cancer deaths worldwide. e proportion of breast cancer is 24.2% and 15.0%, respectively, ranking first in female cancer incidence and death [1]
Search keywords are Chaihu, Baishao, Chenpi, Xiangfu, Gancao, Zhiqiao, and Chuanxiong, and only oral bioavailability (OB) ≥30% and druglikeness (DL) ≥0.18 were considered in this study. e Canonical SMILES sequence of the compound was searched in the PubChem database [18], and this sequence was used to predict the target of the compound in the Swiss Target Prediction online database [19] and collect target protein gene names and UniProt ID in the prediction results
OB ≥30%, DL ≥0.18 as the screening conditions, after searching TCMSP database, ChaiHu-ShuGan-San obtained a total of 157 chemical components, 13 compounds from Baishao, 17 compounds from Chaihu, 5 compounds from Chenpi, 7 compounds from Chuanxiong, 5 compounds from Zhiqiao, 92 qualified compounds from Gancao, and 18 compounds from Xiangfu. 8074 targets were obtained by inputting 158 chemical components into Swiss Target Prediction online database
Summary
Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers endangering women’s health all over the world. e GLOBOCAN 2018 statistics show alarming results that there are 8.6 million new cases of female cancer and 4.2 million female cancer deaths worldwide. e proportion of breast cancer is 24.2% and 15.0%, respectively, ranking first in female cancer incidence and death [1]. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has a long history in the etiology, pathogenesis, prevention, and treatment of breast cancer. ChaihuShugan-San is one of the classical prescriptions for the treatment of “Liver-Qi” stagnation It has the effect of soothing “Liver-Qi.”. According to the theory of TCM, the characteristics of the selective distribution of the effective components of traditional Chinese medicine in the body are basically consistent with the relationship between the viscera and viscera of the corresponding meridian tropism. Chaihu-Shugan-San has been widely studied in pharmacology. In a study of 86 patients with stage III breast cancer, the control group was given a standardized CAF regimen (cyclophosphamide + doxorubicin + 5-fluorouracil), and the experimental group was treated with Chaihu-Shugan-San on the basis of CAF. Network pharmacology is an emerging discipline based on the integration of systems biology, molecular biology, pharmacology, and a variety of network computing platforms in the context of the era of big data, which can more directly explain the association between TCM prescriptions and diseases [16]. erefore, this study constructed a multidimensional network of “ingredient-target-pathway” through network pharmacology to explore the potential molecular mechanism of Chaihu-Shugan-San in the treatment of breast cancer and to provide a certain theoretical basis for Chaihu-Shugan-San in the treatment of breast cancer
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