Asian Journal
Of Traditional Medicines

Abstract: Daphne plants, belonging to Thymelaeaceae, have been used as traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years. Previous studies suggested that they exerted anti-tumor activities and reported a number of compounds with anti-tumor activities, isolated from the genus Daphne. However, the targets of these compounds have not been determined yet. In this study, network pharmacology was used to analyze 128 terpenoid compounds from the genus Daphne and 49 target proteins of liver cancer. The results suggested that the target with the most number of directed edges was 5yz0. The compound which docked with 5yz0 best is AR.DT.25 (acutilobin D), and the compounds with total docking score greater than 10 were almost all Daphnane diterpenoids. The network pharmacology results predicted that the 5yz0 protein was one of the potential targets of the terpenoids from the genus Daphne and then suggested several new targets and compounds for further liver cancer research.

Key words: Daphne, liver cancer, terpenoids, network pharmacology