Exploring bioactive compounds from Arthrospira platensis related for treatment of Systemic lupus erythematosus using network analysis

Abstract Background Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease of unknown etiology. Immunosuppressive drugs are essential for SLE treatment, but there are concerns relating to their toxicity. Beneficial effects of Spirulina (Arthrospira platensis) in humans have been demonstrated in many immunologic conditions; however, the bioactive compounds and their mechanisms of action have not been clearly identified. This study aims to discover potential bioactive compounds from A. platensis C1 for SLE treatment. Results A total of 833 compounds of A. platensis C1 were retrieved from the Spirulina-Proteome Repository (SpirPro) database and by literature mining. We retrieved structures and bioassays of these compounds from the PubChem database; and collected approved and potential drugs for SLE treatment from DrugBank and other databases. Our result demonstrated that cytidine, desthiobiotin, lomustine, agmatine, and anthranilic acid, from the alga, had Tanimoto matching scores of 100% with the following drugs: beta-arabinosylcytosine/cytarabine, d-dethiobiotin, lomustine, agmatine, and anthranilic acid, respectively. The bioassay matching and disease-gene-drug-compound network analysis, using VisANT 4.0 and Cytoscape, revealed 471 SLE-related genes. Among the SLE-related genes, MDM2, TP53, and JAK2 were identified as targets of cytarabine, while PPARG and IL1B were identified as targets of d-dethiobiotin. Binding affinity scores between the drug ligands and bioactive compound ligands with their corresponding receptors by were good and similar by molecular docking and stable by molecular dynamics. Conclusion Cytidine, desthiobiotin, lomustine, agmatine, and anthralinic acid from A. platensis C1 were identified as potential bioactive compounds for SLE treatment, using structural similarity matching, bioassay matching, disease-gene-drug-compound network analysis, and molecular docking and dynamics.