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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Endocrinol.
Sec. Cancer Endocrinology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fendo.2024.1373054

Network medicine analysis for dissecting the therapeutic mechanism of consensus TCM formulae in treating hepatocellular carcinoma with different TCM syndromes

Provisionally accepted
Kai Gao Kai Gao 1,2Wanchen Cao Wanchen Cao 2Zihao He Zihao He 1Liu Liu Liu Liu 1Jincheng Guo Jincheng Guo 1Lei Dong Lei Dong 1Jini Song Jini Song 3Yang Wu Yang Wu 4*Yi Zhao Yi Zhao 4*
  • 1 Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, China
  • 2 School of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, China
  • 3 New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine at Arkansas State University, State of Arkansas, United States
  • 4 The Research Center for Ubiquitous Computing Systems (CUbiCS), Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has long been used as a complementary therapy for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in clinical practice, and has significantly improved the patients' survival time and quality of life. According to the national therapeutic guidelines, TCM summarized 5 detailed subtypes, called TCM syndromes of the HCC disease using stringent diagnostic criteria, and assigned 5 consensus formulae for treating each of them respectively. To dissect the therapeutic mechanisms underlying this syndrome differentiation and treatment, we assembled a protein-protein interaction (PPI) network and performed network medicine analysis of the HCC disease, its TCM syndromes and formulae. Firstly, we showed that the five TCM syndrome types-related genes are topologically and functionally close to the HCC disease-related genes in the PPI network. Then we demonstrated that the gene sets for 5 TCM formulae were significantly adjacent to that for HCC and its related TCM syndromes, giving quantitative measures and functional interpretation about the efficiency of TCM syndrome differentiation as well as their corresponding treatment modalities. Finally, we ranked the importance of active herbal ingredients that constitute TCM herbs by the random walk algorithm through a newly assembled heterogeneous network. We showed that the prioritization results can be further confirmed by literature, demonstrating the power of network medicine analysis for decoding the medicinal knowledge from TCM.

    Keywords: Traditional Chinese Medicine, TCM syndrome type, natural compounds, Network medicine, Hepatocellular Carcinoma, Consensus guideline TCM, traditional Chinese medicine, HCC, hepatocellular carcinoma, PPI, proteinprotein interactions

    Received: 19 Jan 2024; Accepted: 26 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Gao, Cao, He, Liu, Guo, Dong, Song, Wu and Zhao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Yang Wu, The Research Center for Ubiquitous Computing Systems (CUbiCS), Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
    Yi Zhao, The Research Center for Ubiquitous Computing Systems (CUbiCS), Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.