A novel bioinformatics strategy to uncover the active ingredients and molecular mechanisms of Bai Shao in the treatment of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease

Introduction: As a new discipline, network pharmacology has been widely used to disclose the material basis and mechanism of Traditional Chinese Medicine in recent years. However, numerous researches indicated that the material basis of TCMs identified based on network pharmacology was the mixtures of beneficial and harmful substances rather than the real material basis. In this work, taking the anti-NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease) effect of Bai Shao (BS) as a case, we attempted to propose a novel bioinformatics strategy to uncover the material basis and mechanism of TCMs in a precise manner.Methods: In our previous studies, we have done a lot work to explore TCM-induced hepatoprotection. Here, by integrating our previous studies, we developed a novel computational pharmacology method to identify hepatoprotective ingredients from TCMs. Then the developed method was used to discover the material basis and mechanism of Bai Shao against Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease by combining with the techniques of molecular network, microarray data analysis, molecular docking, and molecular dynamics simulation. Finally, literature verification method was utilized to validate the findings.Results: A total of 12 ingredients were found to be associated with the anti-NAFLD effect of BS, including monoterpene glucosides, flavonoids, triterpenes, and phenolic acids. Further analysis found that IL1-beta, IL6, and JUN would be the key targets. Interestingly, molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulation analysis showed that there indeed existed strong and stable binding affinity between the active ingredients and the key targets. In addition, a total of 23 NAFLD-related KEGG pathways were enriched. The major biological processes involved by these pathways including inflammation, apoptosis, lipid metabolism, and glucose metabolism. Of note, there was a great deal of evidence available in the literature to support the findings mentioned above, indicating that our method was reliable.Discussion: In summary, the contributions of this work can be summarized as two aspects as follows. Firstly, we systematically elucidated the material basis and mechanism of BS against NAFLD from multiple perspectives. These findings further enhanced the theoretical foundation of BS on NAFLD. Secondly, a novel computational pharmacology research strategy was proposed, which would assist network pharmacology to uncover the scientific connotation TCMs in a more precise manner.