Combination of comprehensive two-dimensional prostate cancer cell membrane chromatographic system and network pharmacology for characterizing membrane binding active components from Radix et Rhizoma Rhei and their targets.

Prostate cancer (PCa) is a common and fatal cancer for men and effective treatment options are still not enough for patients. Radix et Rhizoma Rhei had been applied to treat PCa long-termly and effectively when combined with surgical treatment and chemotherapy. However, its active components and target proteins are still not quite clear. As membrane receptors play a vital role in PCa, in this study, a novel strategy that combines comprehensive 2D 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane-decorated prostate cancer cell (DU145) membrane chromatographic (CMC) system with network pharmacology approach was developed to characterize membrane binding active components proteins from Radix et Rhizoma Rhei and their targets. Thirteen active components were screened out by CMC system, among which emodin and rhapontigrnin with good membrane binding behaviors were validated to show ideal inhibitory effects on DU145 cells by cell viability and cell apoptosis assays. Five membrane proteins were predicted as the potential targets by the a specific network pharmacology approach, among which mast/stem cell growth factor receptor Kit (KIT) was identified as the most possible target by network data mining. Surface plasmon resonance analysis verified that the dissociation constant (K) of rhapontigrnin and emodin with KIT was 6.06 × 10 M and 8.82 × 10 M, respectively. Our results showed that the combination of comprehensive 2D CMC system and network pharmacology based target identification could not only rapidly identify the membrane binding components but also find the potential membrane protein targets with high confidence, which could broaden the range of application scope of CMC, especially for the screening of active compounds from complex chemical samples using primary pathologic cell lines.