Chen Feng, Zhang Xiaoyun, Chen Yueping
Aug 18, 2021
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Journal
Journal of Clinical Rehabilitative Tissue Engineering Research
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Modern pharmacological studies have shown that anhydroicaritin has an estrogen-like effect and plays a very positive role in the treatment of osteoarthritis. Because of anhydroicaritin's unclear mechanism underlying the treatment of osteoarthritis at the molecular level, network pharmacology and bioinformatics are introduced to explain the potential molecular mechanism of anhydroicaritin in the treatment of osteoarthritis. This can provide a theoretical basis for future drug development and disease treatment. OBJECTIVE: To preliminarily analyze the key molecular mechanism of anhydroicaritin in the treatment of osteoarthritis based on network pharmacology and bioinformatics, thereby providing new potential targets in treating osteoarthritis. METHODS: The pharmacokinetic properties of anhydroicaritin were assessed using TCMSP database. The GEO databases were searched for chips related to anhydroicaritin and osteoarthritis. The differentially expressed genes were analyzed by R language. Then protein-protein interaction networks of anhydroicaritin and osteoarthritis-related differential genes were respectively constructed to screen the hub genes of anhydroicaritin in the treatment of osteoarthritis, and molecular docking verification between anhydroicaritin and hub genes was performed. Finally, the DAVID database was used to enrich the hub genes for GO and KEGG pathway analysis. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The oral bioavailability and drug-likeness of anhydroicaritin were 45.41% and 0.44, respectively. The anhydroicaritin and osteoarthritis chips numbered GSE85871 and GSE1919 respectively were obtained in the GEO database, and the R language analysis screened out 152 and 1 142 differential genes, respectively. The GeneMANIA database was used to construct the protein-protein interaction networks of the targets of anhydroicaritin and osteoarthritis, and 44 hub genes were merged by R language. We used molecular docking to find that anhydroicaritin and hub genes have good binding activity. The enrichment analysis of the DAVID database showed that the biological process of anhydroicaritin in the treatment of osteoarthritis included responses to calcium and metal ions, steroid hormone, and organophosphorus. The signaling pathway mainly involved included MAPK signaling pathway, osteoclast differentiation signaling pathway, PI3K-AKT signaling pathway, and interleukin-17 signaling pathway. Network pharmacology and bioinformatics could be used to effectively analyze the original gene chip data of GEO database, which could not only identify the known signal pathways related to the treatment of osteoarthritis with anhydroicaritin, but also find out some new pathways or biological processes. Anhydroicaritin is expected to be a new molecule in the treatment of osteoarthritis.