Network pharmacology-based study on the mechanisms of Guben Kangmin Formula for the treatment of chronic urticaria

XIE Baolin; WU Dinghong; LU Chuanjian

doi:10.3969/j.issn.1674-8468.2025.03.007

Abstract：Objective To predict the targets and signal pathways of Guben Kangmin Formula(GBKMF)in treating chronic urticaria(CU)based on network pharmacology and molecular doc-king methods,and to explore the mechanisms of its action.Methods The active ingredients in GBKMF were obtained from the databases of TCMSP,BATMAN-TCM,Berstein CNPD and litera-tures.The drug-like components were screened by"rule of five"after comparing with the compu-tational chemical descriptors of small molecule drugs for CU.Principal component analysis(PCA)was further conducted,and potential active components and corresponding targets were obtained.Meanwhile,disease targets for CU were obtained from disease databases.The common targets of the potential active components of GBKMF and CU were explored and submitted to ClueGo and DAVID database for GO enrichment and KEGG pathway analyses.Afterwards,the common targets were submitted to STRING database to analyze the protein-protein interaction(PPI)for these tar-gets.The results were imported into Cytoscape software for MCODE clustering and network topolo-gical property analyses to obtain the core targets.Then core targets were imported into BioGPS da-tabase to analyze the expression abundance of core targets in the skin,lymph nodes,CD4+T cells and CD8+T cells.At the same time,KEGG pathway enrichment analysis was performed for the core targets.Results A total of 1 124 ingredients in GBKMF and 25 small molecule drugs for CU were retrieved.Through drug-likeness property and principal component analyses,349 potential active ingredients were screened,and 90 targets were predicted.The core targets such as HIF1A,IL6 and MAPK3 were obtained by MCODE clustering and topo logical property analyses.These core targets were expressed in the skin,lymph nodes,CD4+T cells,and CD8+T cells.GO anal-ysis showed that these targets were associated with multiple biological processes,molecular compo-sition,and cell function,such as inflammatory response,involving in the regulation of HIF-1 sig-naling pathway,TNF signaling pathway,Th 17 cell differentiation,PI3K-Akt signaling pathway,and other signaling pathways.Molecular docking results indicated that active ingredients,such as deoxyshikonin,yinyanghuoA,and 9-alpha hydroxyfragrinellone 9-o-beta-d-glucosid,regulated tar-gets(INS,MAPK3,JAK2,etc.),accounting for the the therapeutic mechanism of GBKMF for psoriasis.Conclusions GBKMF has characteristics of being multi-component,multi-target,and multi-pathway in the treatment of chronic urticaria,and mechanisms of its action may be related to HIF-1 signaling pathway,TNF signaling pathway,Th17 cell differentiation,PI3K-Akt,and other signaling pathways.