The gene expression profiles in response to 102 traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) components: a general template for research on TCMs

Abstract

Traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) have important therapeutic value in long-term clinical practice. However, because TCMs contain diverse ingredients and have complex effects on the human body, the molecular mechanisms of TCMs are poorly understood. In this work, we determined the gene expression profiles of cells in response to TCM components to investigate TCM activities at the molecular and cellular levels. MCF7 cells were separately treated with 102 different molecules from TCMs, and their gene expression profiles were compared with the Connectivity Map (CMAP). To demonstrate the reliability and utility of our approach, we used nitidine chloride (NC) from the root of Zanthoxylum nitidum, a topoisomerase I/II inhibitor and α-adrenoreceptor antagonist, as an example to study the molecular function of TCMs using CMAP data as references. We successfully applied this approach to the four ingredients in Danshen and analyzed the synergistic mechanism of TCM components. The results demonstrate that our newly generated TCM data and related methods are valuable in the analysis and discovery of the molecular actions of TCM components. This is the first work to establish gene expression profiles for the study of TCM components and serves as a template for general TCM research.