The aim of this paper was to explore the pharmacological mechanism of Baitouweng Decoction in the treatment of ulcerative colitis(UC) by network pharmacology and to preliminarily verify the related targets by animal experiments. Cytoscape software was used to construct "ingredient-target-disease" network through TCMSP, GeneCards and Uniprot databases. The protein interaction network was constructed using STRING database, and the core targets were speculated. The GO and KEGG enrichment analysis was conducted using R software. Autodock Vina software was used for molecular docking of ingredients and core targets. UC mice induced by dextran sodium sulfate(DSS) were treated by Baitouweng Decoction. The pathological changes of colon tissues were observed by HE staining, and the expression levels of related genes were analyzed by immunohistochemistry.The results showed that 26 active ingre-dients and 30 core targets were found in Baitouweng Decoction through network pharmacology. GO enrichment analysis showed that these genes mainly affected nuclear receptor activity, transcription factor activity, steroid hormone receptor activity, ubiquitin-like protein ligase binding, protein heterodimerization activity, transcription cofactor binding and other biological processes. KEGG enrichment analysis showed that P53 signaling pathway, EGFR signaling pathway, TNF signaling pathway, PI3 K-AKT signaling pathway and some cancer-related pathways were enriched. Molecular docking showed that EGFR, PPARG, CASP3, NOS3, caspase-9, CCND1, ADH, IL6 and NFKB1 were better docked with active ingredients. The experiments verified that Baitouweng Decoction could improve the colon pathology of mice, and EGFR is one of the related targets. Our study suggested that Baitouweng Decoction could treat UC through multiple targets and pathways, which provided a theoretical basis for future research.
Keywords: Baitouweng Decoction; molecular docking; network pharmacology; ulcerative colitis.