Traditional Chinese medicine network pharmacology study on exploring the mechanism of Xuebijing Injection in the treatment of coronavirus disease 2019.

As a representative drug for the treatment of severe community-acquired pneumonia and sepsis, Xuebijing (XBJ) injection is also one of the recommended drugs for the prevention and treatment of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), but its treatment mechanism for COVID-19 is still unclear. Therefore, this study aims to explore the potential mechanism of XBJ injection in the treatment of COVID-19 employing network pharmacology and molecular docking methods. The corresponding target genes of 45 main active ingredients in XBJ injection and COVID-19 were obtained by using multiple database retrieval and literature mining. 102 overlapping targets of them were screened as the core targets for analysis. Then built the PPI network, TCM-compound-target-disease, and disease-target-pathway networks with the help of Cytoscape 3.6.1 software. After that, utilized DAVID to perform gene ontology (GO) function enrichment analysis and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis to predict the action mechanism of overlapping targets. Finally, by applying molecular docking technology, all compounds were docked with COVID-19 3 CL protease(3CLpro), spike protein (S protein), and angiotensin-converting enzyme II (ACE2). The results indicated that quercetin, luteolin, apigenin and other compounds in XBJ injection could affect TNF, MAPK1, IL6 and other overlapping targets. Meanwhile, anhydrosafflor yellow B (AHSYB), salvianolic acid B (SAB), and rutin could combine with COVID-19 crucial proteins, and then played the role of anti-inflammatory, antiviral and immune response to treat COVID-19. This study revealed the multiple active components, multiple targets, and multiple pathways of XBJ injection in the treatment of COVID-19, which provided a new perspective for the study of the mechanism of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in the treatment of COVID-19.

Natural product-based design, synthesis and biological evaluation of 2',3,4,4'-tetrahydrochalcone analogues as antivitiligo agents.

A bioactive component, 2',3,4,4'-tetrahydrochalcone (RY3-a) was first isolated from Vernohia anthelmintica (L.) willd seeds, and a set of its analogs, RY3-a-1-RY3-a-15 and RY3-c were designed and synthesized. Biological activity assays showed that RY3-c exhibited better melanogenesis and antioxidant activity and lower toxicity in comparison with RY3-a and butin. Further study tests showed that RY3-c exhibited better melanogenesis activity compared with the positive control 8-methoxypsoralan (8-MOP) in a vitiligo mouse model, suggesting that RY3-c is a good candidate antivitiligo agent. Mechanistic studies showed that RY3-c could repair cell damage induced by excessive oxidative stress and may exert melanin synthesis activity in the mouse melanoma B16F10 cell line by activating the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway and the upregulation of c-kit.