Network pharmacology and molecular docking analysis on mechanisms of Tibetan Hongjingtian () in the treatment of COVID-19.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a highly contagious disease and ravages the world. We proposed that might have potential value in the treatment of COVID-19 patients by regulating the immune response and inhibiting cytokine storm. We aimed to explore the potential molecular mechanism for () against the immune regulation of COVID-19, and to provide a referenced candidate Tibetan herb () to overcome COVID-19. Components and targets of were retrieved from the TCMSP database. GO analysis and Kyoto Encyclopaedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment were built by R bioconductor package to explore the potential biological effects for targets of . The -compound-target network, target pathway network and protein-protein interaction (PPI) network were constructed using Cytoscape 3.3.0. Autodock 4.2 and Discovery Studio software were applied for molecular docking. Four bioactive components (quercetin, kaempferol, kaempferol-3-O-α-l-rhamnoside and tamarixetin) and 159 potential targets of were identified from the TCMSP database. The result of GO annotation and KEGG-pathway-enrichment analyses showed that target genes of were associated with inflammatory response and immune-related signalling pathways, especially IL-17 signalling pathway, and TNF signalling pathway. Targets-pathway network and PPI network showed that IL-6, IL-1B and TNF-α were considered to be hub genes. Molecular docking showed that core compound (quercetin) had a certain affinity with IL-1β, IL-6 and TNF-α. might play an anti-inflammatory and immunoregulatory role in the cytokine storm of COVID-19.