Methodology of network pharmacology for research on Chinese herbal medicine against COVID-19: A review

Abstract

Traditional Chinese medicine, as a complementary and alternative medicine, has been practiced for thousands of years in China and possesses remarkable clinical efficacy. Thus, systematic analysis and examination of the mechanistic links between Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) and the complex human body can benefit contemporary understandings by carrying out qualitative and quantitative analysis. With increasing attention, the approach of network pharmacology has begun to unveil the mystery of CHM by constructing the heterogeneous network relationship of "herb-compound-target-pathway," which corresponds to the holistic mechanisms of CHM. By integrating computational techniques into network pharmacology, the efficiency and accuracy of active compound screening and target fishing have been improved at an unprecedented pace. This review dissects the core innovations to the network pharmacology approach that were developed in the years since 2015 and highlights how this tool has been applied to understanding the coronavirus disease 2019 and refining the clinical use of CHM to combat it.

Keywords: COVID-19; Chinese traditional medicine; Compound identification; Herbal medicine; Network pharmacology.

Fig. 1

Network-based computational algorithms to excavate effective components and underlying mechanisms of Chinese herbal medicine.

Fig. 2

The citation metrics of databases for Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) network pharmacology research and CHM repositioning. The citations were curated from Google Scholar on November 15, 2021.

Fig. 3

Rich resources of Chinese herbal medicine ingredient repositioning via network pharmacology for coronavirus disease 2019 treatment mainly targeting SARS-CoV-2 replication, ACE2 receptor and/or cytokine storm. ACE2: angiotensin-converting enzyme 2; 3CLpro: 3-chymotrypsin-like protease; CXCL: chemokine (CXC motif) ligand 1; IL-6: interleukin-6; PLpro: P-like protease; RBD: receptor-binding domain; RdRp: RNA-dependent RNA polymerase; SARS-CoV-2: severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; TNF-α: tumor necrosis factor-α.