A Network Pharmacology Approach to Explore Clinacanthus Nutans on Colorectal Cancer

Abstract

Network pharmacology is a discipline that investigates traditional herbal medications using bioinformatic tools like chemical, protein, gene, and disease databases, and cytoscape, by visualizing the complex network of interactions between the chemical constituents in the medications and their targets. Clinacanthus nutans (CN) is a traditionally used medicinal herb that has been suggested for its role in cancer treatment. The current study investigated the network pharmacology of CN bioactives as a prospect for the treatment of colorectal cancer. A series of database mining steps were performed to create lists of bioactives, their targets, and target-related diseases. The network was constructed using cytoscape. In this study, 8 bioactives, i.e. β-amyrin, betulin, isovitexin, linolenyl alcohol, lupeol, orientin, palmitic acid, vitexin) were identified which interacted with 46 different targets. β-amyrin was identified as the most potent bioactive with 29 targets.