Network Pharmacology Approach to Uncover the Mechanism Governing the Effect of Polygonum cuspidatum on Hepatoma

Background:As a popular Chinese herbal medicine,polygonum cuspidatum is widely used to treat hepatoma in China.Network pharmacology targets biological networks and analyzes the links between drugs,targets,and diseases in these networks.In this study,network pharmacology was utilized to reveal the potential pharmacological mechanisms of polygonum cuspidatum on hepatoma.Methods:The chemical constituents of polygonum cuspidatum were searched from TCMSP data and target gene names were extracted from UniProt database.The GeneCard,OMIM,PharmGkb,Therapeutic Targets database,and DrugBank database were used to establish a database of hepatoma targets.Common targets for drugs and diseases were obtained from Venn online tools.The protein-protein interaction network was constructed with the STRING database to analyze the related protein interaction relationship.The clusterProfiler R software package was used to enrich the common target proteinsof GO and KEGG to obtained the related functions and pathways.Cytoscape 3.7.2 was used to build a“drug-compound-target-disease”network.Finally,docking of the active components with the core target was carried out.Results:Ten active components of polygonum cuspidatum were obtained,and 108 potential targets for hepatoma were identified.The biological functions of the common target genes of polygonum cuspidatum and hepatoma are shown in GO analysis.Pathways involved in the treatment of hepatoma include virus-related signaling pathways,IL-17 signaling pathways,apoptosis signaling pathways,and PI3K/AKT signaling pathways.Conclusions:The network pharmacology directly shows the“drug-compound-target-disease”effects of polygonum cuspidatum on hepatoma,and provides a basis for studying the mechanism of the effect of polygonum cuspidatum on hepatoma.