Elucidation of the Underlying Mechanism of Gujian Oral Liquid Acting on Osteoarthritis Through Network Pharmacology, Molecular Docking, and Experiment

Overview

Journal Biomed Res Int

Publisher Wiley

Specialties Biomedical Engineering
Biotechnology
General Medicine

Date 2022 Aug 8

PMID 35937393

Authors

Congzi Wu

Qinwen Ge

Zhenyu Shi

Jun Ying

Qi Sun

Shanxing Zhang

Jiali Chen

Pinger Wang

Wenhua Yuan

Songfeng Hu

Hongting Jin

Peijian Tong

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Gujian oral liquid (GJ), a traditional herbal formula in China, has been widely used to treat patients with osteoarthritis (OA). Nevertheless, the active component and potential mechanism of GJ are not fully elucidated. Thus, we investigate the effect of GJ and explore its underlying mechanism on OA through network pharmacology and experimental validation. First, a total of 175 bioactive compounds were identified, and 134 overlapping targets were acquired after comparing the targets of the GJ with those of OA. 8 hub targets, including IL6 and AKT1, were obtained in PPI network analysis. Then, we built up GJ-target-OA network and protein-protein interaction (PPI) network, followed by Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analyses. The results underlined inflammatory tumor necrosis factor (TNF) as a promising signaling pathway of GJ for OA treatment. Moreover, molecular docking also verified the top two active compounds had direct bindings with the top three target genes. Finally, we verified the effect of GJ on OA and . experiments validated that GJ not only significantly attenuated OA phenotypes including articular cartilage degeneration and subchondral bone sclerosis but also reduced the expressions of tumor necrosis factor- (TNF-) and p-p65 in articular chondrocytes. Besides, GJ serum also had a protective effect on chondrocytes against inflammation caused by TNF-. Hence, our study predicted and verified that GJ could exert anti-inflammation and anticatabolism effects partially regulating TNF-/NF-kappa B (NF-B) signaling.

Citing Articles

Exploring the mechanism of action of extract for the treatment of osteoarthritis through network pharmacology, molecular modelling and experimental assays.

Padhee S, Mohanty D, Sahoo A, Jena S, Panda P, Ray A Heliyon. 2024; 10(16):e35971.

PMID: 39224251 PMC: 11367146. DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e35971.

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