Chinese herb couple against diabetes: integrating network pharmacology and mechanism study

Abstract

Cassia twig is a dry twig of Cinnamomum cassia Presl, a Lauraceae plant. Astragalus L is one of the largest genuses of flowering plants in the Leguminosae family. Roots of A. membranaceus Bge. var. mongholicus (Bge.) Hsiao, A. membranaceus (Fisch.) Bge. Chinese herb couple refers to the matching of two herbs in pairs, mostly with synergistic effects or toxicity reduction. This Chinese herb couple (Cassia twig-Astragalus) come from the classic famous book “Zhang Xichun’s book on Chinese herb couple”, which is widely used to treat diabetes. Moreover, both Cassia twig and Astragalus belong to the homology of medicine and food. However, its mechanism is still unclear. The study identified the effective components of Cassia twig-Astragalus by UPLC-Q-TOF-MS/MS and investigated the mechanism of Cassia twig-Astragalus in treating diabetes by virtue of network pharmacology, molecular docking and experimental verification. Firstly, based on UPLC-Q-TOF-MS/MS and network pharmacology, a total of 10 active ingredients of Astragalus and 6 active ingredients of Cassia twig were screened, and a total of 13 key targets were obtained. There were 64 targets at the intersection of Cassia twig-Astragalus with diabetes, mainly including IL-17, TNF, NF-κβ, AGE-RAGE signaling pathway, etc. It mainly involves the response of cells to insulin stimulation, the response to insulin and the positive regulation of cell adhesion. Secondly, molecular docking results showed that quercetin has good binding activities with AKT1 and TNF. Calycosin has good binding activities with AKT1, TNF and CAV1. Formononetin has good binding activities with TNF and IL-6. Isorhamnetin has good binding activities with AKT1, TNF and IL-6. Finally, the animal experiments showed that Cassia twig-Astragalus could improve the body weight, blood glucose and glucose tolerance in diabetic rats. After the intervention with Cassia twig-Astragalus, the inflammatory factors (IL-10, TNF-α, IL-6) were significantly improved in diabetic rats, which also effectively reduced TG and TC.

Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma

Keywords:

• Cassia twig-Astragalus
• diabetes
• uplc-Q-tof-MS/ms
• network pharmacology
• molecular docking

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all authors of references.

Disclosure Statement

The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval

Animals (ethics number: AHUCM-mice-2,023,002, AHUCM-rats-2,020,019) were purchased from Anhui Medical University centre (Hefei, China). All experimental protocols were approved by the Animal Experimentation Ethics Committee of Anhui University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (Hefei, China) and performed in accordance with the Guidelines for Animal Experimentation of Anhui University of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

All tests and operations were carried out in strict accordance with the ethical guidelines and guidelines for the use of laboratory animals in the National Institutes of Health and had been approved by the Laboratory Animal Management Committee of Anhui University of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Authors’ contributions

Xiaoqin Chu and Dayuan Jiang designed the project. Nini Jia and Mengyao Cui collected the data. Yaqing Li performed the data analysis. Jing Li prepared the original draft. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Availability of data and materials

The data used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Science Foundation of China (No. 81803831), Anhui Provincial Major Science and Technology Project (201903a07020007), Major Programs of Natural Science Research in Colleges and Universities in Anhui Province (2023AH040108) and Research project of Anhui Provincial Health Commission (AHWJ2021b062).