Mechanisms exploration of herbal pair of HuangQi-DanShen on cerebral ischemia based on metabonomics and network pharmacology

The herbal pair of HuangQi-DanShen (HD) is frequently used for treating brain injury caused by cerebral ischemia (CI) in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The present work was designed to reveal the active mechanism of HD against CI. In our work, an integrated approach combined 1H-NMR based metabonomics and network pharmacology was applied to decipher the protection of HD against MCAO (middle cerebral artery occlusion)-induced CI rats. Meanwhile, the indicator of neurological deficit and TTC staining were used to estimate the efficacy of HD. The results of neurological deficit test and TTC staining suggested HD could improve the brain injury in CI rats. The metabonomic result indicated that HD could significantly ameliorate 8 serum metabolites in CI rats, which were linked 71 corresponding targeted proteins obtained by Metscape. In addition, 84 targets related HD against CI were obtained by network pharmacology. At last, 5 important targets were screened as hopeful targets for the treatment of CI through integrating them. The integrated method coupled 1H-NMR based metabonomics with network pharmacology provided the insights into the mechanisms of TCM in treating CI.