Pharmacological mechanism of Astragalus and Angelica in the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis based on network pharmacology

Abstract Introduction Herbal medicine is varied and complex, and research on multi-component, multi-target and multi-pathways of Astragalus and Angelica is lacking. This study aimed to study the pharmacological mechanism of Astragalus and Angelica in the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) using on network pharmacology. Methods The main active components, corresponding targets and target genes of Astragalus and Angelica were searched by TCMSP and UniProt database. The target genes of IPF were obtained by GeneCards database and the target genes of active components were intersected with IPF target genes to obtain predictive targets of Astragalus and Angelica acting on IPF. The medicine-compound-target-disease network was constructed by Cytoscape3.6.0 software. The protein protein interaction network was constructed by STRING database to select the key target genes. The DAVID database and KEGG PATHWAY Database were used to analysis the gene ontology (GO) enrichment and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment. Results Sixty-nine overlapping genes were obtained by intersecting 100 compound target genes with 2231 IPF target genes, corresponding to 17 effective compounds, including 15 compounds from Astragalus and two compounds from Angelica. GO enrichment showed the main biological functions of potential genes of Astragalus and Angelica in the treatment of IPF. KEGG pathway enrichment showed the main pathways of Astragalus and Angelica in the treatment of IPF. Conclusion In this study, the target and mechanism of the components of Astragalus and Angelica in the treatment of IPF have been systematically discussed, and have provided ideas for future clinical research.