A Network Pharmacology Approach to Investigate the Active Compounds and Mechanisms of Musk for Ischemic Stroke

This study aims to study the material basis and effective mechanism of musk for ischemic stroke (IS) based on the network pharmacology approach.

We collected the chemical components and target gene of musk from the BATMAN-TCM analytical platform and identified ischemic stroke-related targets from the following databases: DisGeNET, NCBI-Gene, HPO, OMIM, DrugBank, and TTD. The targets of musk and IS were uploaded to the String database to construct the protein-protein interaction (PPI) network, and then, the key targets were analyzed by topological methods. At last, the function biological process and signaling pathways of key targets were carried out by Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis and cluster analysis by using the Database for Annotation, Visualization, and Integrated Discovery (DAVID) server and Metascape platform.

A total of 29 active compounds involving 1081 predicted targets were identified in musk and there were 1104 IS-related targets. And 88 key targets of musk for IS were obtained including AKT1, MAPK1/3, TP53, TNF, SRC, FOS, CASP3, JUN, NOS3, and IL1B. The GO and KEGG enrichment analysis suggested that these key targets are mainly involved in multiple pathways which participated in TNF signaling pathway, estrogen signaling pathway, prolactin signaling pathway, neurotrophin signaling pathway, T-cell receptor signaling pathway, cAMP signaling pathway, FoxO signaling pathway, and HIF1 signaling pathway.

This study revealed that the effective mechanisms of musk against IS would be associated with the regulation of apoptosis, inflammatory response, and gene transcription.