Abstract
The quality control research of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is lagged far behind the space of progress in modernization and globalization. Thus the concept of quality marker (Q-marker) was proposed recently to guide the quality investigations of TCM. However, how to discover and validate the Q-marker is still a challenge. In this paper, a system pharmacology based strategy was proposed to discover Q-marker of HuangQin decoction (HQD) to attenuate Intestinal Damage. Using this strategy, nine measurable compounds including paeoniflorin, baicalin, scutellarein, liquiritigenin, norwogonin, baicalein, glycyrrhizic acid, wogonin, and oroxylin A were screened out as potential markers. Standard references of these nine compounds were pooled together as components combination according to their corresponding concentration in HQD. The bioactive equivalence between components combination and HQD was validated using wound healing test and inflammatory factor determination experiment. The comprehensive results indicated that components combination is almost bioactive equivalent to HQD and could serve as the Q-markers. In conclusion, our study put forward a promising strategy for Q-markers discovery.
Highlights
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) plays a vital role in prevention and treatment of diseases and receives more and more attention (Jiang et al, 2010)
The name and Mol ID of 186 ingredients from Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi, 111 from Paeonia lactiflora Pall, 236 from Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch, and 226 from Ziziphus jujube Mill was shown in Supplementary Table S1
The corresponding target that these ingredients act on was screened out based on TCMSP and STITCH database (Supplementary Table S2)
Summary
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) plays a vital role in prevention and treatment of diseases and receives more and more attention (Jiang et al, 2010). Due to its highly complex chemical composition, TCM is confronting a major challenge in quality control research (Yang et al, 2017). In Chinese Pharmacopeia monographs, the quality standards of TCM were usually established based on the absolute quantitation of one or several specific chemical compounds. This approach can only ensure the consistency of the assigned chemical markers. It is often questionable whether these chemical markers are responsible for and directly related to the holistic efficacy of TCM.
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