Network pharmacology unveils the active components and potential mechanism of traditional efficacy of Mugua

Mugua is a Chinese herbal medicine derived from the dried mature fruit of Chaenomeles speciosa (Sweet) Nakai. This study aimed to dissect the active ingredients and mechanism of Mugua. In the present study, the active components of Mugua were collected and screened through databases combined with UPLC-Q/TOF-MS based qualitative analysis and literature mining, and their potential disease targets were predicted. Then, a network relationship diagram of "component-target-disease-efficacy" was constructed. Moreover, the key active components and core targets were analyzed by molecular docking and in vitro anti-inflammatory assays. The traditional efficacy of Mugua mainly corresponded to 4 diseases, namely, rheumatoid arthritis, diarrhea, edema, and emesis. After screening and comparison, it was found that IL-1β, IL-6, TNF, and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) were the shared inflammatory targets of the 4 diseases. Gene ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway enrichment results showed that these targets were involved mainly in inflammatory responses and inflammation-related pathways, such as rheumatoid arthritis pathway and TNF signaling pathway. Network topology analysis revealed that succinic acid, cinnamic acid, citric acid, caffeic acid, gallic acid, ursolic acid, malic acid, betulinic acid, and oleanolic acid were the key active components, while IL-1β, IL-6, TNF, and EGFR were the shared core targets of these 4 diseases. These results suggested that Mugua could exert traditional efficacy through multi-component and multi-target synergistic mechanisms. Molecular docking results showed that all key active ingredients could autonomously bind to the shared core targets, and the in vitro anti-inflammatory results further confirmed that all the key active components had good anti-inflammatory activities. The present study found that Mugua mainly intervened in the inflammatory response and pathways by acting on key active components and core targets to exert traditional efficacy, providing a theoretical basis for further in-depth research.