Exploring the pharmacological action mechanism of chamomile essential oil on the treatment of breast cancer based on network pharmacology

Abstract

Background: Chamomile essential oil (CEO) can be beneficial in cancer therapy. The aim of the current research is to explore the underlying mechanism of CEO for breast cancer treatment by network pharmacology approach and evaluate its anti-breast cancer capacity in vitro. Methods: We extracted CEO from chamomile flowers and analyzed its chemical components by using GC-MS/MS. Network pharmacology method was employed to screen the active components, potential targets and possible mechanism of CEO for breast cancer treatment. The molecular docking was used to validate the results of network pharmacology. Cell viability, apoptosis and cell cycle assay were used to assess anti-breast cancer effect of CEO. Results: In network pharmacology analysis, we found the 12 effective components and 265 drug-disease common targets of CEO and among them, five active components and 19 targets were determined as the therapeutic targets of breast cancer. GO results demonstrated that the potential targets of CEO were primarily participated in positive regulation of MAPK cascade, distributed in membrane raft and the molecular functions were associated with protein serine-threonine-tyrosine kinase activity. KEGG pathway analysis suggested that the potential targets mainly involved in several signaling pathways such as PI3K-AKT, cAMP, neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction, MAPK and calcium signaling pathway. Molecular docking analysis revealed that LYN, LCK, VGFR, MAPK11, MAPK14, PTK2, JAK1, NR3C1 and ESR1 have shown higher affinity with three components from CEO and suggesting that these compounds might be the most effective ingredients against breast cancer. Besides, we found that CEO treatment suppressed cell proliferation by inducing cell cycle arrest in breast cancer cell lines. Conclusions: Our research suggest that CEO inhibit proliferation of breast cancer cell lines through modulating those multi-pathways and multi-targets. The present study not only indicate the therapeutic potential of CEO for breast cancer, but also provide valuable insight into its underlying mechanism.