Study on molecular mechanism of Jiufen powder in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis based on network pharmacology and molecular docking

Objective: Using network pharmacology and molecular docking method to predict the main active components and targets of Jiufen Powder in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, and to analyze the mechanism of its multi-component, multitarget and multi-pathway. Methods The active components of four traditional Chinese medicines (semen strychni, ephedra, frankincense, myrrh) were collected and screened in the TCMSP, PubChem and Swiss Target Prediction database, and predict their targets; Screening of disease targets associated with rheumatoid arthritis treatment through OMIM and GeneCards databases; Intersecting with Jiufen Powder active component targets to screen out common targets as research targets, A potential protein interaction network was constructed by inputting their common targets into String online analysis platform; Use Cytoscape 3.7.2 software to construct a drug-active component-target visualization network, and use the Metascape platform to perform GO and KEGG enrichment analysis on its core targets to predict its mechanism of action; molecular docking of key targets through molecular docking technology verification. Result The key targets were verified by molesults A total of 40 active components were obtained by screening OB≥30%, DL≥0.18, and corresponding 186 potential action targets; Using "Rheumatoid arthritis" as the key word search for 4465 disease-related targets, and mapped them to potential drug targets,get 124 common targets, among which 9 targets may be useful for the core target of Jiufen Powder treatment of rheumatoid arthritis; A total of 231 nodes and 962 edges were read in the "drug-active component-target" network diagram; There are 22 different signaling pathways in the GO and KEGG enrichment analysis, including the PI3K-Akt signaling pathway , Proteoglycans in cancer, MAPK signaling pathway, chemokine signaling pathway, IL-17 signaling pathway, etc; Molecular docking shows that the compounds in Jiufen Powder have high binding energy with key proteins that cause rheumatoid arthritis. Conclusion Through multi-target and multi-pathway, the potential mechanism of Jiufen Powder in treating rheumatoid arthritis was preliminarily explored, which provided scientific basis for the clinical application and in-depth study of Jiufen Powder.