Using a system pharmacology strategy, this study evaluated the unique pharmacological characteristics of three different neuroprotective compounds for the treatment of cerebral ischemia-reperfusion. A microarray including 374 brain ischemia-related genes was used to identify the differentially expressed genes among five treatment groups: baicalin, jasminoidin, ursodeoxycholic acid, sham, and vehicle, and MetaCore analysis software was applied to identify the significantly altered pathways, processes and interaction network parameters. At pathway level, 46, 25, and 31 pathways were activated in the baicalin, jasminoidin, and ursodeoxycholic acid groups, respectively. Thirteen pathways mainly related with apoptosis and development were commonly altered in the three groups. Additionally, baicalin also targeted pathways related with development, neurophysiologic process and cytoskeleton remodeling, while jasminoidin targeted pathways related with cell cycle and ursodeoxycholic acid targeted those related with apoptosis and development. At process level, three processes were commonly regulated by the three groups in the top 10 processes. Further interaction network analysis revealed that baicalin, jasminoidin, and ursodeoxycholic acid displayed unique features either on network topological parameters or network structure. Additional overlapping analysis demonstrated that compared with ursodeoxycholic acid, the pharmacological mechanism of baicalin was more similar with that of jasminoidin in treating brain ischemia. The data presented in this study may contribute toward the understanding of the common and differential pharmacological mechanisms of these three compounds.
Keywords: Systems pharmacology; baicalin; brain ischemia; jasminoidin; ursodeoxycholic acid.
© 2016 by the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine.