Network Pharmacology and Experimental Verification Reveal the Regulatory Mechanism of Chuanbeimu in Treating Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Abstract

Background

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a common respiratory disorder in pulmonology. Chuanbeimu (CBM) is a traditional Chinese medicinal herb for treating COPD and has been widely utilized in clinical practice. However, the mechanism of CBM in the treatment of COPD remains incompletely understood. This study aims to investigate the underlying therapeutic mechanism of CBM for COPD using network pharmacology and experimental approaches.

Methods

Active ingredients and their targets were obtained from the Traditional Chinese Medicine Systems Pharmacology database. COPD-associated targets were retrieved from the GeneCards database. The common targets for CBM and COPD were identified through Venn diagram analysis. Protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks and disease-herb-ingredient-target networks were constructed. Subsequently, the results of the network pharmacology were validated by molecular docking and in vitro experiments.

Results

Seven active ingredients and 32 potential targets for CBM were identified as closely associated with COPD. The results of the disease-herb-ingredient-target network and PPI network showed that peimisine emerged as the core ingredient, and SRC, ADRB2, MMP2, and NOS3 were the potential targets for CBM in treating COPD. Molecular docking analysis confirmed that peimisine exhibited high binding affinity with SRC, ADRB2, MMP2, and NOS3. In vitro experiments demonstrated that peimisine significantly upregulated the expression of ADRB2 and NOS3 and downregulated the expression of SRC and MMP2.

Conclusion

These findings indicate that CBM may modulate the expression of SRC, ADRB2, MMP2, and NOS3, thereby exerting a protective effect against COPD.

Keywords:

• chuanbeimu
• molecular docking
• network pharmacology
• experiment verification
• chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Data Sharing Statement

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Ethics Approval and Consent to Participate

This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Hainan Medical College, and the data used in this study obtained the informed consent of the Ethics Committee of Hainan Medical College.

Disclosure

The authors declare that they have no competing interests in this work.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the specific research fund of The Innovation Platform for Academicians of Hainan Province (No.YSPTZX202312), Hainan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 823RC559), and Hainan Province Science and Technology Special Fund (No. ZDYF2024SHFZ094).