Network Pharmacological Analysis of the Red Sea Sponge Hyrtios erectus Extract to Reveal Anticancer Efficacy of Corresponding Loaded Niosomes

In this study, the LC-HRMS-assisted chemical profiling of Hyrtios erectus sponge led to the annotation of eleven major compounds (1–11). H. erectus-derived crude extract (HE) was tested in vitro for its antiproliferative activity against three human cancer cell lines, Hep-G2 (human liver cancer cell line), MCF-7 (breast cancer cell line), and Caco-2 (colon cancer cell line), before and after encapsulation within niosomes. Hyrtios erectus extract showed moderate in vitro antiproliferative activities towards the studied cell lines with IC(50) values 18.5 ± 0.08, 15.2 ± 0.11, and 13.4 ± 0.12, respectively. The formulated extract-containing niosomes (size 142.3 ± 10.3 nm, PDI 0.279, and zeta potential 22.8 ± 1.6) increased the in vitro antiproliferative activity of the entrapped extract significantly (IC(50) 8.5 ± 0.04, 4.1 ± 0.07, and 3.4 ± 0.05, respectively). A subsequent computational chemical study was performed to build a sponge–metabolite–targets–cancer diseases network, by focusing on targets that possess anticancer activity toward the three cancer types: breast, colon, and liver. Pubchem, BindingDB, and DisGenet databases were used to build the network. Shinygo and KEGG databases in addition to FunRich software were used for gene ontology and functional analysis. The computational analysis linked the metabolites to 200 genes among which 147 genes related to cancer and only 64 genes are intersected in the three cancer types. The study proved that the co-occurrence of compounds 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, and 10 are the most probable compounds possessing cytotoxic activity due to large number of connections to the intersected cytotoxic genes with edges range from 9-14. The targets possess the anticancer effect through Pathways in cancer, Endocrine resistance and Proteoglycans in cancer as mentioned by KEGG and ShinyGo 7.1 databases. This study introduces niosomes as a promising strategy to promote the cytotoxic potential of H. erectus extract.