AUTHOR=Bao Jiaxin , Wang Yuan , Wang Shun , Niu Dong , Wang Ze , Li Rui , Zheng Yadan , Ishfaq Muhammad , Wu Zhiyong , Li Jichang 

TITLE=Polypharmacology-based approach for screening TCM against coinfection of Mycoplasma gallisepticum and Escherichia coli

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Veterinary Science

VOLUME=9

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/veterinary-science/articles/10.3389/fvets.2022.972245

DOI=10.3389/fvets.2022.972245

ISSN=2297-1769

ABSTRACT=<p>Natural products and their unique polypharmacology offer significant advantages for finding novel therapeutics particularly for the treatment of complex diseases. Meanwhile, Traditional Chinese Medicine exerts overall clinical benefits through a multi-component and multi-target approach. In this study, we used the previously established co-infection model of <italic>Mycoplasma gallisepticum</italic> and <italic>Escherichia coli</italic> as a representative of complex diseases. A new combination consisting of 6 herbs were obtained by using network pharmacology combined with transcriptomic analysis to reverse screen TCMs from the Chinese medicine database, containing <italic>Isatdis Radix, Forsythia Fructus, Ginkgo Folium, Mori Cortex, Licorice</italic>, and <italic>Radix Salviae</italic>. The results of therapeutic trials showed that the Chinese herbal compounds screened by the target network played a good therapeutic effect in the case of co-infection. In summary, these data suggested a new method to validate target combinations of natural products that can be used to optimize their multiple structure-activity relationships to obtain drug-like natural product derivatives.</p>