Network Pharmacology Deciphering Mechanisms of Volatiles of Granule for the Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease.

Objective: To explore the mechanisms of the volatiles of granule (WDG) for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, network pharmacology method integrating absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME) screening, target fishing, network constructing, pathway analysing, and correlated diseases prediction was applied.

Methods: Twelve small molecular compounds of WDG were selected as the objects from 74 volatiles with the relative abundances above 2 %, and their ADME parameters were collected from Traditional Chinese Medicine Systems Pharmacology platform (TCMSP), and the corresponding targets, genes, pathways, and diseases were predicted according to the data provided by TCMSP, DrugBank, Uniport, and the Database for Annotation, Visualization, and Integrated Discovery (DAVID). Then the related pathways and correlation analysis were explored by the Kyoto Encyclopedia and Genomes (KEGG) database. Finally, the networks of compound target, target pathway, and pathway disease of WDG were constructed by Cytoscape software.

Results: Twelve compounds interacted with 49 targets, of which top three targets were gamma-aminobutyric acid receptor subunit alpha-1 (GABRA1), prostaglandin G/H synthase 2 (PGHS-2), and sodium-dependent noradrenaline transporter. Interestingly, these targets were highly associated with depression, insomnia, and Alzheimer's disease that mainly corresponded to mental and emotional illnesses.

Conclusion: The integrated network pharmacology method provides precise probe to illuminate the molecular mechanisms of the main volatiles of WDG for relieving senile dementia related syndromes, which will also facilitate the application of traditional Chinese medicine as an alternative or supplementary to conventional treatments of AD, as well as follow-up studies such as upgrading the quality standard of clinically applied herbal medicine and novel drug development.