Objective: The technology, network pharmacology and molecular docking technology of the ultra performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-Q-TOF-MS/MS) were used to explore the potential molecular mechanism of Platycodon grandiflorum (PG) in the treatment of lung cancer (LC).Methods: UPLC-Q-TOF-MS/MS technology was used to analyze the ingredients of PG and the potential LC targets were obtained from the Traditional Chinese Medicine Systems Pharmacology database, and the Analysis Platform (TCMSP), GeneCards and other databases. The interaction network of the drug-disease targets was constructed with the additional use of STRING 11.0. The pathway enrichment analysis was carried out using Gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) in Metascape, and then the “Drug-Ingredients-Targets-Pathways-Disease” (D-I-T-P-D) network was constructed using Cytoscape v3.7.1. Finally, the Discovery Studio 2016 (DS) software was used to evaluate the molecular docking.Results: Forty-seven compounds in PG, including triterpenoid saponins, steroidal saponins and flavonoids, were identified and nine main bioactive components including platycodin D were screened. According to the method of data mining, 545 potential drug targets and 2,664 disease-related targets were collected. The results of topological analysis revealed 20 core targets including caspase 3 (CASP3) and prostaglandin-endoperoxide synthase 2 (PTGS2) suggesting that the potential signaling pathway potentially involved in the treatment of LC included MAPK signaling pathway and P13K-AKT signaling pathway. The results of molecular docking proved that the bound of the ingredients with potential key targets was excellent.Conclusion: The results in this study provided a novel insight in the exploration of the mechanism of action of PG against LC.

Background: To study the application value of standard uptake value (SUVmax), a positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) index in the diagnosis and evaluation of the prognosis of patients with gastric cancer who have not received any treatment. Methods: A retrospective analysis was made on the patients who were diagnosed to have gastric cancer at the General Hospital of Ningxia Medical University and received a PET/CT examination prior to treatment. According to different factors like sex, pathological stage, and survival time, the SUVmax in the results of 18F-labelled fluoro-2-deoxyglucose (18F-FDG) PET/CT examination was statistically compared and analysed. Results: A total of 110 newly diagnosed patients with gastric cancer were included in this study. Pathological results confirmed that there were 78 cases of gastric adenocarcinoma, 30 cases of primary gastric lymphoma and two cases of chronic atrophic gastritis. The difference between the primary gastric lymphoma group and gastric adenocarcinoma groups was statistically significant (t = 4.13, P < 0.05). In the postoperative pathological report of patients with gastric cancer, the SUVmax of stage I, stage II, stage III and stage IV were 2.89 ± 1.36, 14.09 ± 9.32, 7.36 ± 3.72, and 10.20 ± 1.91, respectively, the difference between each group was statistically significant (F = 16.10, P < 0.05).The univariate survival analysis showed that there was a significant difference in survival time between the low SUVmax and high SUVmax groups (X2 = 5.08, P < 0.05). Cox multivariate survival analysis showed that SUVmax was an independent factor affecting postoperative survival time of patients with gastric adenocarcinoma (P < 0.05). Compared with the low SUVmax group, patients in the high SUVmax group had a higher postoperative death risk than those in the low SUVmax group, hazard ration (HR) = 3.91 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.09-14.01). Conclusion: The index of SUVmax in PET/CT can provide a reliable semi-quantitative diagnostic value for pathological staging after gastric cancer surgery. Furthermore, SUVmax has an important reference value for the survival time of patients after gastric cancer surgery, which can better guide clinical treatment.