ArticleBMC complementary medicine and therapies2023
Mechanism underlying the effect of Pulsatilla decoction in hepatocellular carcinoma treatment: a network pharmacology and in vitro analysis.
Article in BMC complementary medicine and therapies, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 8 citations in OpenAlex.
- How Traditional Chinese Medicine Works: Biological Mechanisms and Clinical Evidence for Hepatocellular Carcinoma Treatment.Drug design, development and therapy · 2026Review
- Network pharmacology analysis and in vitro verification of the anti-sarcopenia effects of formononetin.Bioresources and bioprocessing · 2025Article
- Anticancer properties and metabolomic profiling of Shorea roxburghii extracts toward gastrointestinal cancer cell lines.BMC complementary medicine and therapies · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundCurrently, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is associated with a poor prognosis. Moreover, there exist limited strategies for treating HCC. Pulsatilla decoction (PD), a traditional Chinese medicine formula, has been used to treat inflammatory bowel disease and several cancer types. Accordingly, we explored the mechanism of PD in HCC treatment via network pharmacology and in vitro experiments.
methodsOnline databases were searched for gene data, active components, and potential target genes associated with HCC development. Subsequently, bioinformatics analysis was performed using protein-protein interaction and Network Construction and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) to screen for potential anticancer components and therapeutic targets of PD. Finally, the effect of PD on HCC was further verified by in vitro experiments.
resultsNetwork pharmacological analysis revealed that 65 compounds and 180 possible target genes were associated with the effect of PD on HCC. These included PI3K, AKT, NF-κB, FOS, and NFKBIA. KEGG analysis demonstrated that PD exerted its effect on HCC mainly via the PI3K-AKT, IL-17, and TNF signaling pathways. Cell viability and cell cycle experiments revealed that PD could significantly inhibit cancer cell proliferation and kill HCC cells by inducing apoptosis. Furthermore, western blotting confirmed that apoptosis was mediated primarily via the PI3K-AKT, IL-17, and TNF signaling pathways.
conclusionTo the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to elucidate the molecular mechanism and potential targets of PD in the treatment of HCC using network pharmacology.
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