Revealing the Common Mechanisms of Scutellarin in Angina Pectoris and Ischemic Stroke Treatment via a Network Pharmacology Approach

Current advances on the therapeutic potential of scutellarin: an updated review

Scutellarin is widely distributed in Scutellaria baicalensis, family Labiatae, and Calendula officinalis, family Asteraceae, and belongs to flavonoids. Scutellarin has a wide range of pharmacological activities, it is widely used in the treatment of cerebral infarction, angina pectoris, cerebral thrombosis, coronary heart disease, and other diseases. It is a natural product with great research and development prospects. In recent years, with in-depth research, researchers have found that wild scutellarin also has good therapeutic effects in anti-tumor, anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidation, anti-virus, treatment of metabolic diseases, and protection of kidney. The cancer treatment involves glioma, breast cancer, lung cancer, renal cancer, colon cancer, and so on. In this paper, the sources, pharmacological effects, in vivo and in vitro models of scutellarin were summarized in recent years, and the current research status and future direction of scutellarin were analyzed.

Metabolites from scutellarin alleviating deferoxamine-induced hypoxia injury in BV2 cells cultured on microfluidic chip combined with a mass spectrometer

The changes of metabolites of tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle in cells under hypoxia play a key role in drug screening. In order to dynamically monitor the drug metabolism changes of Scutellarin in the hypoxia environment induced by deferoxamine (DFO), a microfluidic-chip mass spectrometry method was used to study the real-time monitoring of drug metabolism changes under hypoxia conditions. This system has six drug-loading units, cell culture chamber, metabolite collection, filtration, HPLC separation and mass spectrometer. The cells in each microchannel were incubated with continuous flow of culture medium, metabolites will be collected by the fixed card slot, automatic sampling needle will be precise positioned and sampled. Through this new system combined with molecular biological methods, the changes of metabolites in TCA cycle of BV2 cells and drug metabolism of Scutellarin can be determined in real-time. In general, we illustrated a new mechanism of Scutellarin for reducing BV2 cell hypoxia injury and presented a novel analysis strategy that opened a way for real-time online monitoring of the energy metabolic mechanism of the effect of drugs on cells and further provided a superior strategy to screen natural drug candidates for hypoxia-related brain disease treatment.

A New Therapeutic Trend: Natural Medicine for Ameliorating Ischemic Stroke via PI3K/Akt Signaling Pathway

Ischemic stroke (IS) is an acute cerebrovascular disease caused by sudden arterial occlusion, which is characterized by a high morbidity, mortality, and disability rate. It is one of the most important causes of nervous system morbidity and mortality in the world. In recent years, the search for new medicine for the treatment of IS has become an attractive research focus. Due to the extremely limited time window of traditional medicine treatment, some side effects may occur, and accompanied by the occurrence of adverse reactions, the frequency of exploration with natural medicine is significantly increased. Phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase/Protein kinase B (PI3K/Akt) signaling pathway is a classical pathway for cell metabolism, growth, apoptosis, and other physiological activities. There is considerable research on medicine that treats various diseases through this pathway. This review focuses on how natural medicines (including herbs and insects) regulate important pathophysiological processes such as inflammation, oxidative stress, apoptosis, and autophagy through the PI3K/Akt signaling pathway, and the role it plays in improving IS. We found that many kinds of herbal medicine and insect medicine can alleviate the damage caused by IS through the PI3K/Akt signaling pathway. Moreover, the prescription after their combination can also achieve certain results. Therefore, this review provides a new candidate category for medicine development in the treatment of IS.

Detecting Key Functional Components Group and Speculating the Potential Mechanism of Xiao-Xu-Ming Decoction in Treating Stroke

Stroke is a cerebrovascular event with cerebral blood flow interruption which is caused by occlusion or bursting of cerebral vessels. At present, the main methods in treating stroke are surgical treatment, statins, and recombinant tissue-type plasminogen activator (rt-PA). Relatively, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has widely been used at clinical level in China and some countries in Asia. Xiao-Xu-Ming decoction (XXMD) is a classical and widely used prescription in treating stroke in China. However, the material basis of effect and the action principle of XXMD are still not clear. To solve this issue, we designed a new system pharmacology strategy that combined targets of XXMD and the pathogenetic genes of stroke to construct a functional response space (FRS). The effective proteins from this space were determined by using a novel node importance calculation method, and then the key functional components group (KFCG) that could mediate the effective proteins was selected based on the dynamic programming strategy. The results showed that enriched pathways of effective proteins selected from FRS could cover 99.10% of enriched pathways of reference targets, which were defined by overlapping of component targets and pathogenetic genes. Targets of optimized KFCG with 56 components can be enriched into 166 pathways that covered 80.43% of 138 pathways of 1,012 pathogenetic genes. A component potential effect score (PES) calculation model was constructed to calculate the comprehensive effective score of components in the components-targets-pathways (C-T-P) network of KFCGs, and showed that ferulic acid, zingerone, and vanillic acid had the highest PESs. Prediction and docking simulations show that these components can affect stroke synergistically through genes such as MEK, NFκB, and PI3K in PI3K-Akt, cAMP, and MAPK cascade signals. Finally, ferulic acid, zingerone, and vanillic acid were tested to be protective for PC12 cells and HT22 cells in increasing cell viabilities after oxygen and glucose deprivation (OGD). Our proposed strategy could improve the accuracy on decoding KFCGs of XXMD and provide a methodologic reference for the optimization, mechanism analysis, and secondary development of the formula in TCM.

The Material Basis and Mechanism of Xuefu Zhuyu Decoction in Treating Stable Angina Pectoris and Unstable Angina Pectoris

METHODS

Firstly, we used a network proximity approach to calculate and compare the effectiveness of the formula with that of Western drugs for each type of angina, including all targets and intersecting targets, from a topological perspective. Secondly, we compared the mechanisms of action of the two angina pectoris at three levels and five aspects, including conventional and modular analysis approaches. Thirdly, based on the unique functions of each angina in the complex heterogeneous network, we designed a reverse process for finding the material basis using dynamic, static, and enriched items as well as a total item. Finally, the designed inverse process, material basis, and mechanism of action were validated.

RESULTS

The target network of Xuefu Zhuyu decoction is closer to the target network of each type of angina than that of Western drugs, and the intersection targets have a closer proximity. Comparison of the mechanisms of action showed that stable angina and unstable angina had 158 common targets, while the unique targets were 34 and 1, respectively. Modularity analysis showed that the GO similarity of target modules was highly correlated with KEGG similarity. We ended up with 67 compounds upregulated for stable angina and 47 compounds upregulated for unstable angina. Our results were validated by literature mining, high-volume molecular docking, and miRNA enrichment analysis.

CONCLUSIONS

For both types of angina pectoris, Xuefu Zhuyu decoction is superior to Western drugs. A comparison of various aspects led to the unique mechanisms of action, from which the material basis of each type of angina was deduced.

Identification of Sitogluside as a Potential Skin-Pigmentation-Reducing Agent through Network Pharmacology

Many traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) with skin-whitening properties have been recorded in the Ben-Cao-Gang-Mu and in folk prescriptions, and some literature confirms that their extracts do have the potential to inhibit pigmentation. However, no systematic studies have identified the specific regulatory mechanisms of the potential active ingredients. The aim of this study was to screen the ingredients in TCMs that inhibit skin pigmentation through a network pharmacology system and to explore underlying mechanisms. We identified 148 potential active ingredients from 14 TCMs, and based on the average “degree” of the topological parameters, the top five TCMs (Fructus Ligustri Lucidi, Hedysarum multijugum Maxim., Ampelopsis japonica, Pseudobulbus Cremastrae Seu Pleiones, and Paeoniae Radix Alba) that were most likely to cause skin-whitening through anti-inflammatory processes were selected. Sitogluside, the most common ingredient in the top five TCMs, inhibits melanogenesis in human melanoma cells (MNT1) and murine melanoma cells (B16F0) and decreases skin pigmentation in zebrafish. Furthermore, mechanistic research revealed that sitogluside is capable of downregulating tyrosinase (TYR) expression by inhibiting the ERK and p38 pathways and inhibiting TYR activity. These results demonstrate that network pharmacology is an effective tool for the discovery of natural compounds with skin-whitening properties and determination of their possible mechanisms. Sitogluside is a novel skin-whitening active ingredient with dual regulatory effects that inhibit TYR expression and activity.

Shared Molecular Mechanisms of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy and Its Clinical Presentations: Automated Molecular Mechanisms Extraction Approach

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is the most common inherited cardiovascular disease with a prevalence of 1 in 500 people and varying clinical presentations. Although there is much research on HCM, underlying molecular mechanisms are poorly understood, and research on the molecular mechanisms of its specific clinical presentations is scarce. Our aim was to explore the molecular mechanisms shared by HCM and its clinical presentations through the automated extraction of molecular mechanisms. Molecular mechanisms were congregated by a query of the INDRA database, which aggregates knowledge from pathway databases and combines it with molecular mechanisms extracted from abstracts and open-access full articles by multiple machine-reading systems. The molecular mechanisms were extracted from 230,072 articles on HCM and 19 HCM clinical presentations, and their intersections were found. Shared molecular mechanisms of HCM and its clinical presentations were represented as networks; the most important elements in the intersections’ networks were found, centrality scores for each element of each network calculated, networks with reduced level of noise generated, and cooperatively working elements detected in each intersection network. The identified shared molecular mechanisms represent possible mechanisms underlying different HCM clinical presentations. Applied methodology produced results consistent with the information in the scientific literature.

Systematic Investigation of the Effect of Powerful Tianma Eucommia Capsule on Ischemic Stroke Using Network Pharmacology

Background

Ischemic stroke (IS) is a serious disease with a high rate of death and disability, and a growing number of people are becoming victims. Existing drugs not only have limited therapeutic effects but also have obvious side effects. Most importantly, drug resistance due to long-term or improper use of drugs is detrimental to patients. Therefore, it is urgent to find some alternative or supplementary medicines to alleviate the current embarrassment. Powerful Tianma Eucommia Capsule (PTEC) is mainly used to treat IS in China for thousands of years; however, the molecular mechanism is not clear.

Methods

Pharmacology ingredients and target genes were filtered and downloaded from websites. A pharmacology ingredient-target gene network was constructed to predict the molecular interactions between ingredients and target genes. Enrichment analysis was performed to explore the possible signal pathways. LeDock was used to simulate the interaction form between proteins and main active ingredients and to deduce key amino acid positions.

Results

Two hundred eighty-nine target genes and seventy-four pharmacological ingredients were obtained from public databases. Several key ingredients (quercetin, kaempferol, and stigmasterol) and primary core target genes (PTGS1, NCOA2, and PRSS1) were detected through ingredient-target gene network analysis. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analysis demonstrated that ingredients affect networks mainly in nuclear receptor activity and G protein-coupled amine receptor activity; besides, fluid shear stress and atherosclerosis, human cytomegalovirus infection, and hepatitis B signaling pathways might be the principal therapy ways. A series of presumed key amino acid sites (189ASP, 190SER, 192GLN, 57HIS, and 99TYE) were calculated in PRSS1. Six of the target genes were differentially expressed between male and female patients.

Conclusions

Seven new putative target genes (ACHE, ADRA1A, AR, CHRM3, F7, GABRA1, and PRSS1) were observed in this work. Based on the result of GO and KEGG analysis, this work will be helpful to further demonstrate the molecular mechanism of PTEC treatment of IS.