Identifying multitarget directed phytoconstituent against Parkinson's disease: A network pharmacology approach

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative condition after Alzheimer's disease, with no cure for either. The major hurdle in identifying a therapeutic agent for such progressive disorders is their complex pathology. The current understanding is still in the cradle stage due to multifactorial protein and pathway participation, with neuroinflammation playing a major role. In the quest to link neuroinflammatory processes with cell death, pyroptosis was found to play a key role in various pathologies, including PD.

To identify the pathological mediators participating in pyroptosis and PD, we used network pharmacology tools. Inflammatory pathways like IL-17, TLR-, NLR-, besides cell death, were reported to be highly enriched in the Gene Ontology and KEGG analysis. Further, to screen the phytoconstituent that can potentially act through a multi-targeted approach in inhibiting the pyroptosis process, we used molecular docking and in vitro tools.

We identified 11 hubb genes through network pharmacology and screened phytoconstituents against them, where 3 of them could bind with all the targets in the docking study. Rosmarinic acid and silibinin could be a promising multitarget ligand, corroborating the docking scores, MMGBSA energies, and MD simulation results. In the preliminary in vitro screening, we observed that cellular ROS, mitochondrial damage, and cell death, as predicted by macropore formation, were attenuated by both the phytoconstituent comparable to Brilliant blue G, supporting our hypothesis. This suggests the potential use of RA and SB against pyroptosis and neuroinflammation-mediated PD pathology.