Molecular Mechanisms of Tibetan Medicinal Sea Buckthorn in the Treatment of Pulmonary Diseases: An Integrated Analysis of Network Pharmacology and Transcriptomics.

Chronic pulmonary diseases, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), idiopathic interstitial pneumonias (IIPs), pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), and pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB), are all marked by persistent immune imbalance, inflammation, and tissue injury. Despite the known anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties of sea buckthorn, its protective mechanisms across these conditions remain poorly defined. We obtained active compounds and predicted targets from TCMSP and SwissTargetPrediction, and integrated disease genes from GeneCards and CTD with transcriptomic evidence from differential expression analysis and WGCNA. Using SVM-RFE, random forest, and LASSO, we identified hub genes and performed enrichment, immune infiltration, molecular docking, and molecular dynamics analyses. Our results showed that quercetin, kaempferol, and isorhamnetin were the core compounds linked to immune- and inflammation-related targets. The four diseases shared involvement in Toll-like receptor, NOD-like receptor, and related inflammatory pathways, along with recurrent alterations in myeloid cells. Besides, results from molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulations also suggested relatively stable interactions between key compounds and protein targets. Overall, these findings suggest that sea buckthorn may have potential pharmacological relevance across chronic lung diseases. It might do so by modulating common inflammatory signaling pathways and myeloid-related immune responses. At the same time, these findings provide a basis for further experimental validation.