A Comparative Study of Systems Pharmacology and Gene Chip Technology for Predicting Targets of a Traditional Chinese Medicine Formula in Primary Liver Cancer Treatment

• Main Authors: Songzhe Li (Author), Yang Sun (Author), Yue Sun (Author)
• Format: Book
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A., 2022-03-01T00:00:00Z.
• Subjects: article
• Online Access: Connect to this object online.
• Notes: 1663-9812; 10.3389/fphar.2022.768862
• Keywords: ZZXJT; systems pharmacology; gene chip; molecular docking; liver cancer; drug target prediction comparing TCM target prediction models 2; Therapeutics. Pharmacology; RM1-950
• Source: Frontiers in Pharmacology, Vol 13 (2022)

Background: The systems pharmacology approach is a target prediction model for traditional Chinese medicine and has been used increasingly in recent years. However, the accuracy of this model to other prediction models is yet to be established.Objective: To compare the systems pharmacology modelwithexperimental gene chip technology by using these models to predict targets of a traditional Chinese medicine formulain the treatment of primary liver cancer.Methods: Systems pharmacology and gene chip target predictions were performed for the traditional Chinese medicine formula ZhenzhuXiaojiTang (ZZXJT). A third square alignment was performed with molecular docking.Results: Identification of systems pharmacology accounted for 17% of targets, whilegene chip-predicted outcomes accounted for 19%.Molecular docking showed that the top ten targets (excludingcommon targets) of the system pharmacology model had better binding free energies than the gene chip model using twocommon targets as a benchmark. For both models, the core drugs predictions were more consistent than the core small molecules predictions.Conclusion:In this study, the identified targets of systems pharmacology weredissimilar to those identified by gene chip technology; whereas the core drug and small molecule predictions were similar.