Exploration of the hypoglycemic mechanism of Fuzhuan brick tea based on integrating global metabolomics and network pharmacology analysis

Xingliang Xiang; Shanqin You; Zhaoxiang Zeng; Jinlin Xu; Yuqi Lin; Yukun Liu; Lijun Zhang; Rongzeng Huang; Chengwu Song; Shuna Jin

doi:10.3389/fmolb.2023.1266156

Exploration of the hypoglycemic mechanism of Fuzhuan brick tea based on integrating global metabolomics and network pharmacology analysis

Front Mol Biosci. 2024 Jan 18:10:1266156. doi: 10.3389/fmolb.2023.1266156. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Xingliang Xiang^#^{1

2}, Shanqin You^#¹, Zhaoxiang Zeng¹, Jinlin Xu^{1

3}, Yuqi Lin¹, Yukun Liu¹, Lijun Zhang⁴, Rongzeng Huang^{1

5}, Chengwu Song^{1

5}, Shuna Jin^{4

5}

Affiliations

¹ School of Pharmacy, Hubei University of Chinese Medicine, Wuhan, Hubei, China.
² School of Life and Health Sciences, Hainan University, Haikou, Hainan, China.
³ Department of Pharmacy, Ezhou Central Hospital, Ezhou, Hubei, China.
⁴ School of Basic Medical Sciences, Hubei University of Chinese Medicine, Wuhan, Hubei, China.
⁵ Hubei Shizhen Laboratory, Wuhan, Hubei, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Introduction: Fuzhuan brick tea (FBT) is a worldwide popular beverage which has the appreciable potential in regulating glycometabolism. However, the reports on the hypoglycemic mechanism of FBT remain limited. Methods: In this study, the hypoglycemic effect of FBT was evaluated in a pharmacological experiment based on Kunming mice. Global metabolomics and network pharmacology were combined to discover the potential target metabolites and genes. In addition, the real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) analysis was performed for verification. Results: Seven potential target metabolites and six potential target genes were screened using the integrated approach. After RT-qPCR analysis, it was found that the mRNA expression of VEGFA, KDR, MAPK14, and PPARA showed significant differences between normal and diabetes mellitus mice, with a retracement after FBT treatment. Conclusion: These results indicated that the hypoglycemic effect of FBT was associated with its anti-inflammatory activities and regulation of lipid metabolism disorders. The exploration of the hypoglycemic mechanism of FBT would be meaningful for its further application and development.

Keywords: Fuzhuan brick tea; LC-MS/MS; diabetes mellitus; metabolomics; network pharmacology.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by Special Scientific Research Projects for Double First-Class Construction of Hubei University of Chinese Medicine (No. 2023ZZXJ001) and the grant of Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province (No. 2022CFB486).