Traditional Uses, Phytochemistry, Pharmacology, Quality Control, Industrial Application, Pharmacokinetics and Network Pharmacology of Pogostemon cablin: A Comprehensive Review

Gastroretentive Raft Forming System for Enhancing Therapeutic Effect of Drug-Loaded Hollow Mesoporous Silica on Gastric Ulcers

Gastric ulcers are characterized by damage to the stomach lining and are often triggered by substances such as ethanol and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Patchouli alcohol (PA) has demonstrated effectiveness in treating gastric ulcers through antioxidative and anti-inflammatory effects. However, the water insolubility of PA and rapid gastric emptying cause low drug concentration and poor absorption in the stomach, resulting in limited treatment efficacy of PA. This study develops an oral gastroretentive raft forming system (GRFDDS) containing the aminated hollow mesoporous silica nanoparticles (NH2-HMSN) for PA delivery. The application of NH2-HMSN can enhance PA-loading capacity and water dispersibility, promoting bio-adhesion to the gastric mucosa and sustained drug release. The incorporation of PA-loaded NH2-HMSN (NH2-HMSN-PA) into GRFDDS can facilitate gastric drug retention and achieve long action, thereby improving therapeutic effects. The results reveal that NH2-HMSN-PA protects the gastric mucosa damage by inhibiting NLRP3-mediated pyroptosis. The GRFDDS, optimized through orthogonal design, demonstrates the gastric retention capacity and sustained drug release, exhibiting significant therapy efficacy in an ethanol-induced acute gastric ulcers model and an aspirin-induced chronic gastric ulcers model through antioxidation, anti-pyroptosis, and anti-inflammation. This study provides a potential strategy for enhancing druggability of insoluble natural compounds and therapeutic management of gastric ulcers.

Multi-target meridians classification based on the topological structure of anti-cancer phytochemicals using deep learning

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) meridian is the key theoretical guidance of prescription against tumor in clinical practice. However, there is no scientific and systematic verification of therapeutic action of herbs under meridians context. Several studies have determined the Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) phytochemicals for intrinsic attribute or meridians classification based on artificial intelligence (AI) tools. However, it is challenging to represent the complex molecular structures with large heterogeneity through the current technologies. In addition, the multiple correspondence between herbs and meridians has not been paid much attention.

AIM OF THE STUDY

We aim to develop an AI framework to classify multi-target meridians through the topological structure of phytochemicals.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A total of 354 anti-cancer herbs, their corresponding TCM meridians and 5471 ingredient compounds were collected from public databases of CancerHSP, ETCM, and Hit 2.0. The statistical analysis of herbal and compound datasets, clustering analysis of the associated cancers, and correlational analysis of meridian tropism were preliminary conducted. Then a deep learning (DL) hybrid model named GRMC consisting of graph convolutional network (GCN) and recurrent neural network (RNN) was employed to generate the meridian multi-label sequences based on molecular graph.

RESULTS

The curing herbs against tumors have tight relationships to lung, liver, stomach, and spleen meridians. These herbs behave different properties in curing certain cancer. Certain cancer types have co-occurrence such as ovarian, bladder and cervical cancer. Compounds have multitarget meridians with characteristics of higher-order correlations. Compared with the other state-of-the-art algorithms on the datasets and previous methods dealing with conventional fixed fingerprints of herbal compounds, the proposed GRMC has superior overall performance on testing dataset with the one error of 0.183, hamming loss of 0.112, mean averaged accuracy (MAA) of 0.855, mean averaged precision (MAP) of 0.891, mean averaged recall (MAR) of 0.812, and mean averaged F1 score (MAF) of 0.849.

CONCLUSIONS

The proposed method can predict multi-targeted meridians through neural graph features in herbal compounds and outperforms several comparison methods. It could provide a basis for understanding the molecular scientific evidence of TCM meridians.

Orientin Reduces the Effects of Repeated Procedural Neonatal Pain in Adulthood: Network Pharmacology Analysis, Molecular Docking Analysis, and Experimental Validation

Background

Premature infants often undergo painful procedures and consequently experience repeated procedural neonatal pain. This can elicit hyperalgesia and cognitive impairment in adulthood. Treatments for neonatal pain are limited. Orientin is a flavonoid C-glycoside that has repeatedly been shown to have pharmacological effects in the past decades. The aim of this study was to systematically explore the effect of orientin on repeated procedural neonatal pain using network pharmacology, molecular docking analysis, and experimental validation.

Methods

Several compound-protein databases and disease-protein databases were employed to identify proteins that were both predicted targets of orientin and involved in neonatal pain. A protein-protein interaction (PPI) network was constructed, and Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analyses were performed to explore the potential mechanism of action. Molecular docking analysis was employed to calculate the binding energy and visualize the interactions between orientin and potential target proteins. Finally, a mouse model of repeated procedural neonatal pain was established and orientin was administered for 6 days. The mechanical and thermal pain thresholds were assessed in neonates and adult mice. A Morris water maze was employed to investigate cognitive impairment in adult mice.

Results

A total of 286 proteins that were both predicted targets of orientin and involved in neonatal pain were identified. The hub proteins were SRC, HSP90AA1, MAPK1, RHOA, EGFR, AKT1, PTPN11, ESR1, RXRA, and HRAS. GO analysis indicated that the primary biological process (BP), molecular function (MF), and cellular component (CC) were protein phosphorylation, protein kinase activity, and vesicle lumen, respectively. KEGG analysis revealed that the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway may be the key to the mechanism of action. Molecular docking analysis showed the high binding affinities of orientin for MAPK1, MAPK8, and MAPK14. In mice, orientin inhibited the hyperalgesia in the pain threshold tests in neonates and adult mice and cognitive impairment in adult mice. Immunofluorescence showed that phosphorylated MAPK1 (p-ERK) protein levels in the hippocampus and spinal dorsal horn were downregulated by orientin.

Conclusion

The findings suggested that orientin alleviates neonatal pain, and the MAPK signaling pathway is involved.

Network pharmacology, a promising approach to reveal the pharmacology mechanism of Chinese medicine formula

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE

Network pharmacology is a new discipline based on systems biology theory, biological system network analysis, and multi-target drug molecule design specific signal node selection. The mechanism of action of TCM formula has the characteristics of multiple targets and levels. The mechanism is similar to the integrity, systematization and comprehensiveness of network pharmacology, so network pharmacology is suitable for the study of the pharmacological mechanism of Chinese medicine compounds.

AIM OF THE STUDY

The paper summarizes the present application status and existing problems of network pharmacology in the field of Chinese medicine formula, and formulates the research ideas, up-to-date key technology and application method and strategy of network pharmacology. Its purpose is to provide guidance and reference for using network pharmacology to reveal the modern scientific connotation of Chinese medicine.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Literatures in this review were searched in PubMed, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Web of Science, ScienceDirect and Google Scholar using the keywords "traditional Chinese medicine", "Chinese herb medicine" and "network pharmacology". The literature cited in this review dates from 2002 to 2022.

RESULTS

Using network pharmacology methods to predict the basis and mechanism of pharmacodynamic substances of traditional Chinese medicines has become a trend.

CONCLUSION

Network pharmacology is a promising approach to reveal the pharmacology mechanism of Chinese medicine formula.

Potential herb‒drug interactions between anti-COVID-19 drugs and traditional Chinese medicine

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has spread worldwide. Effective treatments against COVID-19 remain urgently in need although vaccination significantly reduces the incidence, hospitalization, and mortality. At present, antiviral drugs including Nirmatrelvir/Ritonavir (Paxlovid^TM), Remdesivir, and Molnupiravir have been authorized to treat COVID-19 and become more globally available. On the other hand, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been used for the treatment of epidemic diseases for a long history. Currently, various TCM formulae against COVID-19 such as Qingfei Paidu decoction, Xuanfei Baidu granule, Huashi Baidu granule, Jinhua Qinggan granule, Lianhua Qingwen capsule, and Xuebijing injection have been widely used in clinical practice in China, which may cause potential herb-drug interactions (HDIs) in patients under treatment with antiviral drugs and affect the efficacy and safety of medicines. However, information on potential HDIs between the above anti-COVID-19 drugs and TCM formulae is lacking, and thus this work seeks to summarize and highlight potential HDIs between antiviral drugs and TCM formulae against COVID-19, and especially pharmacokinetic HDIs mediated by metabolizing enzymes and/or transporters. These well-characterized HDIs could provide useful information on clinical concomitant medicine use to maximize clinical outcomes and minimize adverse and toxic effects.

Nonpharmacological approaches for improving gut resilience to chemotherapy

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

Mucositis of the gastrointestinal tract is a debilitating side effect of chemotherapy that negatively influences treatment tolerance and patient life quality. This review will evaluate the recent literature on nonpharmacological strategies that have the potential to improve chemotherapy-induced mucositis (CIM).

RECENT FINDINGS

Alternatives to pharmacological approaches have shown great promise in preventing CIM. Natural products, including curcumin, ginseng, quercetin, and patchouli all show potential in mitigating CIM. In addition, dietary patterns, such as the elemental diet, high fiber diet, and diets high in amino acids have documented benefits in preventing CIM. Perhaps the greatest advancement coming to this arena in recent years is in the field of probiotics. Indeed, research on single species as well as probiotic mixtures show potential in reducing CIM insofar as probiotics are now being suggested for treatment of CIM by governing bodies. Although behavioral interventions including psychological interventions and exercise interventions have shown promise in reducing cancer therapy-related side effects, more work in this domain is warranted and particularly in the context of CIM.

SUMMARY

Alternatives to pharmacological approaches show great potential for use in prevention and treatment of CIM and should be further developed for use in the clinic.

Effect of Traditional Chinese Medicine on the Gut Microbiota in Heat-Stressed Laying Hens

Gut microbiota plays an important role in health and disease. To determine whether the traditional Chinese formula Zi Huang Huo Xiang San (ZHHXS) modulates gut microbiota under heat stress, a heat stress model was prepared in Roman layer hens by housing them at temperatures of 32–36°C and administering ZHHXS for 4 weeks. The Roman egg layers were randomly divided into three groups with 10 hens in each: a ZHHXS treatment group (ZHHXS-HS), a heat-stressed group (HS), and a blank control group (BC). The ZHHXS-HS and HS groups were housed in a 34 ± 2°C environment, while the BC group was housed at 25 ± 1°C. The ZHHXS-HS hens were fed a diet supplemented with 1% ZHHXS from 1 to 28 days, while the other groups were not. Gut microbiota in the hens' feces was assessed through 16S rRNA high-throughput sequencing on days 1, 3, 7, 14, and 28. A plot of the PCA scores showed that the gut microbiota composition in the BC group was a similar trend in the ZHHXS-HS group on days 1 and 3. The principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) unweighted distribution showed that the gut microbiota composition had no significant differences between the BC and ZHHXS-HS groups on days 1 and 7. The PCoA weighted distribution showed that the gut microbiota composition had no significant differences between the BC and ZHHXS-HS groups on days 1 and 3. This study showed that the composition of gut microbiota in layer hens with heat stress was modulated by ZHHXS treatment. ZHHXS treatment caused key phylotypes of gut microbiota to match the BC group, particularly Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Bacteroides, and Enterococcus. The effect of ZHHXS in alleviating heat stress could be achieved by altering the composition of gut microbiota and regulating some key phylotypes.