Abstract
Maxing Ganshi Decoction (MXGSD) is used widely for asthma over thousands of years, but its underlying pharmacological mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, systematic and comprehensive network pharmacology was utilized for the first time to reveal the potential pharmacological mechanisms of MXGSD on asthma. Specifically, we collected 141 bioactive components from the 600 components in MXGSD, which shared 52 targets common to asthma-related ones. In-depth network analysis of these 52 common targets indicated that asthma might be a manifestation of systemic neuro-immuno-inflammatory dysfunction in the respiratory system, and MXGSD could treat asthma through relieving airway inflammation, improving airway remodeling, and increasing drug responsiveness. After further cluster and enrichment analysis of the protein-protein interaction network of MXGSD bioactive component targets and asthma-related targets, we found that the neurotrophin signaling pathway, estrogen signaling pathway, PI3K-Akt signaling pathway, and ErbB signaling pathway might serve as the key points and principal pathways of MXGSD gene therapy for asthma from a systemic and holistic perspective, and also provides a novel idea for the development of new drugs for asthma.
Highlights
Bronchial asthma is the most common chronic respiratory disease in the world[1]
After screening the common targets of Maxing Ganshi Decoction (MXGSD) and asthma (Supplementary Table S5), we explored the underlying mechanisms of these common targets with gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis (Supplementary Table S6)
The components were screened by two ADMErelated models, OB and DL, and 141 bioactive components were included (Fig. 1C), of which 7.80% (11/141) from Mahuang, 7.09% (10/141) from Xingren, 81.56% (115/141) from Gancao, and 3.55% (5/141) from Shigao (Fig. 1D)
Summary
Bronchial asthma (hereinafter referred to as asthma) is the most common chronic respiratory disease in the world[1] It affects all age groups, especially in children, and has a high morbidity rate[2]. As the same neuro-immuno-inflammatory cascade reactions are common in different tissues and organs, and can interact with each other, a single organ cannot be viewed separately from the whole body. For this reason, we speculate that MXGSD is effective for asthma via the regulation of the body’s different systems and homeostasis. We used topological analysis to construct a core protein-protein interaction (PPI) network of MXGSD and asthma, classified the core PPI network based on cluster analysis and further explored the core pharmacological mechanisms of MXGSD in treating asthma
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