Network pharmacology research of Astragali Radix in treating chronic atrophic gastritis rats based on mitochondrial metabonomics

Abstract Astragali Radix (HuangQi), one important traditional Chinese herb, is used for treatment of chronic atrophic gastritis (CAG). To comprehensively evaluate its regulation on CAG, a mitochondria-specific metabonomics was applied to reveal its action on energy metabolism based on ultra high performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole – Exactive mass spectrometry. 16 related metabolites from mitochondria samples were served as potential biomarkers of CAG. Nine out of them were significantly regulated by HuangQi. Combining with network pharmacology, three active components from HuangQi and 3 mitochondrial metabolites exerted better docking abilities with 56 predicted targeted proteins based on SystemsDock, which were involved into multiple biological abnormities including mitochondrion dysfunction. The results demonstrated that mitochondrial energy metabolism played crucial role contributing to HuangQi against CAG, which was one important mechanism of HuangQi.