Open AccessIdentifying Active Compounds and Mechanism of Camellia nitidissima Chi on Anti-Colon Cancer by Network Pharmacology and Experimental Validation
Author(s) -
Yiwei Chen,
Erhong Hao,
Fan Zhang,
Zhenhong Du,
Jinling Xie,
Feng Chen,
Chunlin Yu,
Xin Hou,
Jiagang Deng
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.552
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1741-4288
pISSN - 1741-427X
DOI - 10.1155/2021/7169211
Subject(s) - akt1 , kegg , systems pharmacology , computational biology , luteolin , biology , mechanism (biology) , docking (animal) , pharmacology , pi3k/akt/mtor pathway , gene ontology , gene , signal transduction , drug , quercetin , biochemistry , medicine , gene expression , philosophy , nursing , epistemology , antioxidant
Camellia nitidissima Chi (CNC) is a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) with anticancer property. However, its underlying mechanisms of anti-colon cancer (CC) remain unknown. Therefore, a systematic approach is proposed in the present study to elucidate the anticancer mechanisms of CNC based on network pharmacology and experimental validation. Initially, the potential active ingredients of CNC were verified via the TCMSP database based on the oral bioavailability (OB) and drug-likeness (DL) terms. Hub targets of CNC were acquired from SwissTarget prediction and TCMSP databases, and target genes related to CC were gathered from GeneCards and OMIM databases. Cytoscape was used to establish the compound-target networks. Next, the hub target genes collected from the CNC and CC were parsed via GO and KEGG analysis. Results of GO and KEGG analysis reveal that quercetin and luteolin in CNC, VEGFA and AKT1 targets, and PI3K-Akt pathway were associated with the suppression of CC. Besides, the result of molecular docking unveils that VEGFA demonstrates the most powerful binding affinity among the binding outcomes. This finding was successfully validated using in vitro HCT116 cell model experiment. In conclusion, this study proved the usefulness of integrating network pharmacology with in vitro experiments in the elucidation of underlying molecular mechanisms of TCM.