Prediction of the molecular mechanism of eucommiae Cortex - Achyranthis bidentatae radix in the treatment of osteoarthritis: network pharmacology and molecular docking

Abstract

Objective

To retrieve the core drug of osteoarthritis in clinic using Data Mining, predict the drug molecular action target through the Network Pharmacology, identify the key nodes of the interaction by combining with the related targtes of osteoarthritis, explore the pharmacological mechanism of Traditional Chinese Medicine against osteoarthritis and other possible mechanisms of actions.

Methods

to retrieve the commonly used therapeutic formulations for osteoarthritis patients in clinical with PubMed, CNKI, VIP, CBM, Wan Fang Database and other databases, and screen out the core drugs through the Ancient and Modern Medical Case Cloud Platform and software Gephi, filter out the core drug molecules and targets combined with TCMSP database and the targets of osteoarthritis in Genecard and OMIM database, plunge those data into R project and Cytoscape to construct the intersection model of Drug molecule-osteoarthritis, establish PPI network and GO and conduct KEGG enrichment analysis with String database. Vina molecular docking was finally implemented to draw molecular docking diagram, and the results were analyzed after comprehensive analysis.

Results

The core drug pairs were identified as ‘Eucommiae Cortex - Achyranthis Bidentatae Radix’ through correlation analysis, complex network analysis based on the coefficient. ‘Eucommiae Cortex - Achyranthis Bidentatae Radix’ can intervene cell behavior through multiple pathways and regulate cell metabolism, cytokine synthesis, oxidative and cellular immunity with the help of topology analysis in String Database.

Conclusions

The core molecules of Quercetin and Kaempferol derived from ‘Eucommia bark – achyranthes’ can change the spatial conformation of PTGSs by hydrogen bonding with PTGSs, the hydrophobic bonds and van der Waals forces generated by Baicalein, Wogonin and β-carotene, thereby changing the activity of PTGSs and affecting bone properties the process of osteoarthritis.

Keywords:

• Eucommiae cortex
• Achyranthis bidentatae radix
• osteoarthritis
• network pharmacology
• molecular docking

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).