Molecular mechanisms revealed by network pharmacology of Xuebijing on the treatment of acute respiratory distress syndrome caused by novel coronavirus infection

P. Tao, L. Jiming

Department of Critical Medicine, Department of Emergency, Chongqing Bishan District People’s Hospital, Chongqing, China. liujm0714@163.com

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• Alternative medicine
• Infectious Diseases

OBJECTIVE: The study aims to predict the target and molecular mechanism of Xuebijing injection in the treatment of novel coronavirus-induced acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), based on network pharmacology.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Chinese and English studies were searched to obtain the main active components of Xuebijing injection. ETCM, TCMSP and Targetnet online databases were adopted used to predict Xuebijing therapeutic targets. GeneCards, CTD and OMIM databases were researched used to research for the novel coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) and ARDS-related targets. Integrate analysis was carried out to obtain the targets of Xuebijing injection in the treatment of ARDS caused by novel coronavirus. STRING was adopted to analyze the interaction of common target proteins. GO and KEGG enrichment analyses were carried out using Bioconductor bioinformatics software package based on R software. Network visualization was performed with Cytoscape software.

RESULTS: A total of 30 main active components in Xuebijing injection were collected in this study, which can act on 615 targets. The core components of Xuebijing injection in treating the coronavirus-induced ARDS are Ferulic acid, Ethyl ferulate, Albiflorin, Caffeic acid, Rosmarinic acid, Naringenin, Quercetin. Xuebijing injection has 56 target points for the treatment of ARDS caused by the novel coronavirus, among which AKT1, TNF, CASP3 and STAT3 are the core ones. The main molecular mechanisms of Xuebijing injection in treating the coronavirus-induced ARDs include PI3K-Akt, TNF, STAT3, NF-κB and apoptosis-related pathways.

CONCLUSIONS: Xuebijing mainly treats ARDS caused by the novel coronavirus through anti-inflammation, anti-apoptosis, and regulation of immunity since it has the characteristics of multi-component, multi-target and multi-pathway.

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