Antiepileptic Therapy of Abrus cantoniensis: Evidence from Network Pharmacology

Abstract

The present study explores the mechanism of antiepileptic treatment of Abrus cantoniensis through network pharmacology. During this process, several databases were recruited, e.g., the TCMSP database, HERB database, and SwissTargetPrediction database were used to retrieve the active components and targets of Abrus cantoniensis; GeneCards database and OMIM database were used to retrieve the targets of epilepsy. The targets of epilepsy and Abrus cantoniensis were subjected to target intersection in venny2.1, and protein interaction analysis of Abrus cantoniensis in the String database. We set the Cyto NCA plug-in condition as betweenness; selected the first 8 genes of betweenness as the core genes; performed the integrative bioinformatics of candidates by GO analysis and KEGG analysis. Moreover, AutoDockTools and AutoDockVina software were used to perform the molecular docking; Pymol was used to perform the docking visualization. We obtained three active components of Abrus cantoniensis, which are mainly related to β-sitosterol and stigmasterol; 92 intersection targets of epilepsy of Abrus cantoniensis, including 9 core targets such as AKT1, ESR1, MMP9, CES1, SRC, HIF1A, ABCB1, CASP3, and SNCA; 8 core targets were flavanone constituent proteins. Define p value less than 0.05; according to the screening principle, the first 20 GO pathways and KEGG pathways were selected. We found that Abrus cantoniensis was mainly connected with epilepsy through the neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction signaling pathway, the neurodegeneration pathway, and multiple disease signaling pathway; the docking between ESR1 and components is the most stable among the core targets. Besides, the binding energies of the core targets were all less than -5 kcal mol-1. Taken together, the current research provides a new strategy for the antiepileptic treatment of Abrus cantoniensis.