Identification of the Main Active Components and Mechanism of Wang Bi Tablet in Treating Rheumatoid Arthritis Based on Integrative Pharmacology

Abstract

Wang Bi tablet (WBT) is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in China. We employed integrative pharmacology, including rapid analysis of chemical composition, pharmacological experiment, and network pharmacology analysis, to elucidate the active components and mechanism underlying the effect of WBT against RA. The chemical fingerprint of WBT was revealed by UPLC-QTOF-MS/MS, and the chemical composition was identified. The anti-inflammatory effect of WBT was evaluated in TNF-α-stimulated RAW264.7 cells by ELISA and transcriptome sequencing. Network pharmacology analysis, functional enrichment analysis, and network visualization were performed. A total of 293 chemical constituents were preliminarily identified or tentatively characterized in WBT extract, and they effectively inhibited inflammatory response in TNF-α-stimulated RAW264.7 cells. Forty-eight key active constituents were identified based on high-frequency binding to hub targets and their corresponding targets number. Next, 135 corresponding hub genes, which may be the putative targets of WBT in treating RA, were selected. Functionally, the putative targets were significantly associated with the inflammatory immune response regulation module, energy metabolism regulation module, and cell function regulation module, corresponding to the traditional efficacy of WBT. In summary, this study revealed, for the first time using integrative pharmacology, that WBT may attenuate RA through the inflammation-immune regulation system.

Identification of the Main Chemical constituents and mechanism of Renshen Guben oral liquid against Renal Fibrosis

“…The conditions of UPLC-QTOF-MS/MS are in accordance with the previous study [ 12 , 13 ]. Briefly, the analysis was performed on a Waters Acquity UPLC I-Class system (Waters Corp., Milford, United States), coupled with a Waters QTOF-MS/MS Mass System (Manchester, United Kingdom) equipped with electrospray ionization (ESI).…”

“…In order to describe the chemical fingerprint of RSGB, UPLC-QTOF-MS/MS was used for sample collection and UNIFI 1.8 software for identification [ 12 , 13 ]. The base peak intensity (BPI) chromatograms of RSGB in positive and negative ion modes were shown in Fig.…”

“…The potential targets of the compounds identified in RSGB were predicted using the TCM target prediction and functional analysis module of TCMIP v2.0 ( http://www.tcmip.cn/ )[ 12 – 14 ]. The prediction accuracy was set to 0.70 (medium and high similarity).…”

Anti-asthmatic fraction screening and mechanisms prediction of Schisandrae Sphenantherae Fructus based on a combined approach

“…Network pharmacology is an emerging discipline based on the theory of systems biology, and it may exert a meaningful tool to characterize the target profiles and pharmacological mechanisms of TCM in detail ( Jiao et al, 2021 ; Zhang et al, 2021 ). Molecular docking could determine the binding energy between the ligands and macromolecules ( Xu et al, 2021 ).…”