A network pharmacology approach to unraveling the therapeutic effects of Huang Qi

Abstract

Huang Qi (Astragalus Radix) is a TCM herb widely used to replenish ‘Qi’ in the human body. It has many properties including anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant but the mechanisms of these properties are still unclear. As TCM evolves, it is important to integrate it into modern medicine with scientific evidence supporting its functions. Network pharmacology is a new research method for analysing complicated interactions between many compounds, making it a suitable approach in attempting to understand and identify mechanism pathways of Huang Qi. BIND software was used to conduct the molecular docking on bioactive compounds and human protein. Results were arranged according to binding affinity before splitting the data into two sets. First is the top 5000 entries, second is the top entry from each bioactive compound. Both datasets underwent KEGG, GO and Jensen DISEASE enrichment analysis and a network was generated using the top entries data. From the results, Huang Qi is suggested to be important in maintaining immune balance. It can promote immune response and be anti-inflammatory mainly due to its bidirectional regulation of cytokine. Future studies can aim to explore this topic more and even conduct the same experiment on other TCM herbs.