Exploring the underlying mechanisms of fisetin in the treatment of hepatic insulin resistance via network pharmacology and in vitro validation

OBJECTIVE: To characterize potential mechanisms of fisetin on hepatic insulin resistance (IR) using network pharmacology and in vitro validation. METHODS: Putative targets of fisetin were retrieved from the Traditional Chinese Medicine Systems Pharmacology database, whereas the potential genes of hepatic IR were obtained from GeneCards database. A protein–protein interaction (PPI) network was constructed according to the intersection targets of fisetin and hepatic IR using the Venn diagram. The biological functions and potential pathways related to genes were determined using Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analyses. Cell experiments were also conducted to further verify the mechanism of fisetin on hepatic IR. RESULTS: A total of 118 potential targets from fisetin were associated with hepatic IR. The areas of nodes and corresponding degree values of TP53, AKT1, TNF, IL6, CASP3, CTNNB1, JUN, SRC, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), and HSP90AA1 were larger and could be easily found in the PPI network. Furthermore, GO analysis revealed that these key targets were significantly involved in multiple biological processes that participated in oxidative stress and serine/threonine kinase activity. KEGG enrichment analysis showed that the PI3K/AKT signaling pathway was a significant pathway involved in hepatic IR. Our in vitro results demonstrated that fisetin treatment increased the expressions of EGFR and IRS in HepG2 and L02 cells under normal or IR conditions. Western blot results revealed that p-AKT/AKT levels were significantly up-regulated, suggesting that fisetin was involved in the PI3K/AKT signaling pathway to regulate insulin signaling. CONCLUSION: We explored the pharmacological actions and the potential molecular mechanism of fisetin in treating hepatic IR from a holistic perspective. Our study lays a theoretical foundation for the development of fisetin for type 2 diabetes. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12986-023-00770-z.