Department of Radiation Oncology, Yue Bei People's Hospital, Shaoguan, Guangdong, China.
Faculty of Education, Shaoguan University, Shaoguan, Guangdong, China.
Anticancer Agents Med Chem. 2021;21(15):2012-2022. doi: 10.2174/1871520621666210126090632.
Compound Kushen Injection (CKI) is used clinically for relieving cancer pain and treating various solid tumors, particularly lung cancer. However, the underlying mechanisms of CKI in lung cancer remain to be further elucidated.
This study aimed to obtain evidence regarding the potential efficacy of the active compounds and therapeutic targets of CKI at a molecular level by using Network Pharmacology (NP), which is an emerging technique for dealing with complex systems, such as those of herbal medicine.
The chemical and predicted target information of CKI was obtained from databases and computational prediction, respectively; lung-cancer drugs and their corresponding targets were retrieved from Drugbank and Drugcentral. The online tool, STRING, was used to gather target-pathway interactions for establishing a target-(pathway)-target network to identify the target group that was most relevant to cancer. Based on this module, a protein-protein interaction network was established for identifying the potential therapeutic targets and the potential active ingredients.
CKI might affect lung cancer drug targets or their neighbor nodes to trigger anti-cancer effects. The compounds that were predicted to bind to the potential therapeutic targets were recommended as potential active ingredients of CKI, which included naringenin from Baituling, and kurarinone and isoxanthohumol from Kushen.
This NP-based study might provide insights into understanding CKI from the perspective of modern science with reference to approved Western medicine for lung cancer. Moreover, network-based methods could also be further used with distinct advantages in dealing with complex information and systems of medicine.
复方苦参注射液（CKI）在临床上用于缓解癌痛和治疗各种实体瘤，特别是肺癌。然而，CKI 治疗肺癌的潜在机制仍需进一步阐明。
本研究旨在通过网络药理学（NP）获得 CKI 的活性化合物和治疗靶点的分子水平的潜在疗效的证据，NP 是一种处理草药等复杂系统的新兴技术。
从数据库中获取 CKI 的化学成分和预测靶点信息，从 Drugbank 和 Drugcentral 中检索肺癌药物及其相应靶点。使用在线工具 STRING 收集靶点-通路相互作用，建立靶点-（通路）-靶点网络，以确定与癌症最相关的靶点群。基于该模块，建立蛋白质-蛋白质相互作用网络，以确定潜在的治疗靶点和潜在的活性成分。
CKI 可能通过影响肺癌药物靶点或其相邻节点来触发抗癌作用。预测与潜在治疗靶点结合的化合物被推荐为 CKI 的潜在活性成分，包括来自北豆根的柚皮苷、苦参中的苦参酮和异黄腐醇。
本基于 NP 的研究可能为从现代科学的角度理解 CKI 提供了一些见解，并参考了治疗肺癌的西医。此外，基于网络的方法在处理复杂的医学信息和系统方面也具有明显的优势。
