Rules of Chinese Herbal Intervention of Radiation Pneumonia Based on Network Pharmacology and Data Mining

To explore the mechanism and principles of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in the management of radiation pneumonia.

The targets of radiation pneumonia were obtained by screening the GeneCards, OMIM, TTD, DrugBank, and HERB databases, analyzing ADME parameters. In addition, compounds and Chinese herbs that can act on the targets were screened from the TCMSP database. The core target compounds for TCM were used to construct the target-compound, compound-traditional Chinese medicine, and target-compound-traditional Chinese medicine networks. These networks were further used to select the core targets, compounds, and TCM. The binding strength between the core targets and compounds was determined using AutoDock Vina. The trajectory for the molecular dynamics simulation was completed by Desmond version 2020.

A total of 55 active targets in radiation pneumonia were identified. Subsequently, 137 candidate compounds and 469 Chinese herbs were matched. Frequency statistics showed that the Chinese herbs that could interfere with radiation pneumonia were mainly bitter, spicy, and sweet, with both cold and warm properties. Moreover, they mainly belonged to liver and lung channels. The core targets included TNF, IL-6, TGF-β1, and TP53. The most important components were quercetin, resveratrol, and (-)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate. Moreover, the most significant traditional Chinese herbs were Perilla pueraria, ephedra, Lonicerae japonicae, and sea buckthorn. Furthermore, analysis of 222 sets of receptor-ligand docking results suggested that the compounds had good docking activity to their core targets. By combining the docking binding energy, we determined that the chemical compounds had strong binding energy to the targets.

Using network pharmacology, we explored the potential mechanism of TCM in the treatment of radiation pneumonia. The general rules for application of TCM in the treatment of radiation pneumonia were summarized. This study provides baseline information for future research on the development of TCM for the management of radiation pneumonia.