Abstract:

Network pharmacology and molecular docking techniques were used to explore the mechanism of paeoniflorin (PAE) in the treatment of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD),and the results were validated by the experiments.The cell model of HepG2 fatty liver induced by sodium oleate (NaOA) was used to investigate the of PAE in vitro.Network pharmacology predicts and screens out the core targets of PAE in the treatment of NAFLD,the results were verified by molecular docking and the inflammatory model of RAW 264.7 cell induced by lipopolysaccharides (LPS).The fatty liver cell model results showed that PAE can mitigate the lipid accumulation in HepG2 cells induced by NaOA.The Network pharmacology results of PAE obtained 60 potential targets,and the analysis of protein-protein interaction (PPI) network showed that the top 10 targets were interleukin-6 (IL-6),tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and protein kinase B (AKT).GO and KEGG enrichment analysis showed that the core target may play a role through inflammatory signaling pathways such as interleukin-17 (IL-17),nuclear factor kappa-B (NF-κB) signaling pathway.Molecular docking results showed that PAE had good binding force with TNF,IL-6,AKT,etc.The results of the inflammation RAW 264.7 cell model showed that PAE could inhibit the proliferation of cells induced by LPS,and reduce the levels of TNF-α,IL-6,IL-1β,reactive oxygen species (ROS),superoxide (O₂^-·),and nitric oxide (NO) (P<0.05 or P<0.01).In summary,PAE can alleviate lipid accumulation by inhibiting cellular inflammation and oxidative stress.

Key words: paeoniflorin, fatty liver, molecular docking, network pharmacology, inflammation