Application of network pharmacology and bioinformatics to study the effective components and mechanisms of Xuebijing in the treatment of acute pancreatitis

Abstract Xuebijing injection (XBJ), a traditional Chinese medicine, has been widely used in the treatment of acute pancreatitis (AP). However, the chemical composition and potential therapeutic mechanism is still unclear. Here, we used network pharmacology, bioinformatics analysis and molecular docking to investigate the main effective components, potential therapeutic targets and the molecular mechanisms of XBJ in treating AP. TCMSP and HERB database were used to identify components and potential targets of XBJ. GEO database were used to identify the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between AP and normal samples. Genecards, DisGeNet, NCBI and CTD databases were used to search AP-related therapeutic targets. Then, the overlapped genes between potential targets of XBJ, DEGs and therapeutic targets of AP were selected and conducted for bioinformatics analysis. Finally, the binding activity between XBJ’s main effective components and the core potential therapuetic targets of AP were analyzed by molecular docking. As a result, 122 potential therapeutic targets of XBJ for AP treatment were selected. Bioinformatics analysis revealed that the mechanism of XBJ in AP treatment might be associated with IL-17 and TNF signaling pathway. Molecular docking demonstrated that the effective components of XBJ had the good binding activity to the 5 core potential therapeutic targets of AP. Further studies found that quercetin and luteolin were the main effective components of XBJ in AP treatment.In conclusions, our outcomes demonstrate that XBJ treated AP depending on quercetin and luteolin, and mainly through IL-17 and TNF signaling pathways.