A network pharmacology study on the Tripteryguim wilfordii Hook for treatment of Crohn’s disease

BACKGROUND: To explore the mechanism of action of Tripterygium wilfordii Hook (TWH) in the treatment of Crohn’s disease (CD) by network pharmacology. METHODS: Traditional Chinese Medicine Systems Pharmacology database and analysis platform (TCMSP) was used to obtain the active constituents and targets of TWH. “Crohn’s disease” was used as a search term to search for related targets of CD from GeneCards database and OMIM database, thereby obtaining the targets of TWH against CD. The Cytoscape 3.7.1 software was used to construct a Chinese medicine compound-target network and STRING database to construct a protein-protein interaction network (PPI). The DAVID 6.8 online tool was used to perform gene ontology (GO) and kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genome (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis of overlapping targets. RESULTS: The database results showed that there were 30 active ingredients (14 key active ingredients) in TWH and 36 targets were screened out for CD treatment. Network analysis indicated that main targets of main active components of TWH were target genes such as VEGFA, MAPK8 and CASP3, which are involved in the regulation of cancer pathway, TNF signal pathway, hepatitis B pathway, apoptosis pathway, NF-kappa B signal pathway and so forth. CONCLUSIONS: TWH can play a multi-target and multi-channel synergistic treatment of CD by anti-angiogenesis, anti-apoptosis, anti-inflammation and immune regulation.