A system-level investigation into the mechanisms of Chinese Traditional Medicine: Compound Danshen Formula for cardiovascular disease treatment

PLoS One. 2012;7(9):e43918. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0043918. Epub 2012 Sep 4.

Abstract

Compound Danshen Formula (CDF) is a widely used Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) which has been extensively applied in clinical treatment of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). However, the underlying mechanism of clinical administrating CDF on CVDs is not clear. In this study, the pharmacological effect of CDF on CVDs was analyzed at a systemic point of view. A systems-pharmacological model based on chemical, chemogenomics and pharmacological data is developed via network reconstruction approach. By using this model, we performed a high-throughput in silico screen and obtained a group of compounds from CDF which possess desirable pharmacodynamical and pharmacological characteristics. These compounds and the corresponding protein targets are further used to search against biological databases, such as the compound-target associations, compound-pathway connections and disease-target interactions for reconstructing the biologically meaningful networks for a TCM formula. This study not only made a contribution to a better understanding of the mechanisms of CDF, but also proposed a strategy to develop novel TCM candidates at a network pharmacology level.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Administration, Oral
  • Biological Availability
  • Cardiovascular Diseases / drug therapy*
  • Cardiovascular Diseases / metabolism
  • Computer Simulation
  • Databases, Factual
  • Drugs, Chinese Herbal / chemistry*
  • Drugs, Chinese Herbal / pharmacology
  • Humans
  • Medicine, Chinese Traditional
  • Metabolic Networks and Pathways
  • Models, Biological*
  • Molecular Docking Simulation
  • Molecular Dynamics Simulation
  • Pharmacogenetics
  • Phenanthrolines / chemistry*
  • Phenanthrolines / pharmacology
  • Salvia miltiorrhiza / chemistry*
  • Signal Transduction
  • Systems Biology
  • Thermodynamics

Substances

  • Drugs, Chinese Herbal
  • Phenanthrolines
  • dan-shen root extract

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Fund of China (Grant No. 31170796), the Special Research Foundation for Traditional Chinese Medicine (Grant No. 200907001-5), as well as the Innovation Fund of Northwest A&F University. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.