Screening of core target genes of Shenqi Fuzheng formula in the treatment of gastric cancer and mechanism analysis
HAN Tiantian
SHI Yongquan
TENG Yueling
ZHANG Huiyue
SUN Lei
Abstract：Objective To identify the core target genes and to investigate the potential mechanisms of Shenqi Fu-zheng formula(SQFZ)in the treatment of gastric cancer(GC)using network pharmacology.Methods The active ingre-dient targets of the SQFZ were retrieved from the Traditional Chinese Medicine Systems Pharmacology Database and Analy-sis Platform(TCMSP).GC-related genes were collected from the GeneCards and OMIM databases.Common targets be-tween SQFZ target genes and GC-related genes were identified as potential therapeutic targets.A protein-protein interac-tion(PPI)network was constructed using the STRING database,and core targets were identified through topological analy-sis.We used the Cytoscape 3.7.2 software to construct the intersection target map of each Chinese medicinal herb in the SQFZ and the gastric cancer,and through topological analysis,we identified the core effective active ingredients of the SQFZ for the treatment of gastric cancer.Gene Ontology(GO)functional annotation and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes(KEGG)pathway enrichment analysis were performed using the DAVID database.Finally,molecular docking was carried out to evaluate the binding affinity between the core bioactive compounds and the core target pro-teins.Results A total of 234 potential targets of SQFZ and 2,172 GC-related targets were collected.The intersection of these datasets yielded 135 common targets.Topological analysis identified protein kinase B(AKT1)and mammalian target of rapamycin(mTOR)as the core therapeutic targets,with apigenin and daidzein determined to be the core bioac-tive ingredients of SQFZ.GO and KEGG analyses indicated that SQFZ primarily modulated apoptosis and gene expres-sion,with significant involvement in the PI3K-AKT signaling pathway and"lipid and atherosclerosis".Molecular dock-ing confirmed strong binding affinities between the core ingredients and target proteins.Conclusion This study sug-gests that AKT1 and mTOR are the core targets of SQFZ in GC treatment,and its therapeutic mechanism is closely associat-ed with regulation of the PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling pathway.
Keywords：gastric carcinomaShenqi Fuzheng formulanetwork pharmacologymolecular docking technology
Publication Date：2025-10-25
Online Publishing Date：2025-11-20(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：5( 19-22,39 )