The key targets and signaling pathways of sulforaphane against colorectal cancer were analyzed based on network pharmacology

Background: Sulforaphane is a dietary supplement molecule with a wide range of clinical applications, but its anti-colorectal cancer mechanism is not clearly understood. This paper was to systematically studied the molecular mechanism of sulforaphane against colorectal cancer by network pharmacology.Methods: The protein target was screened by SwissTargetPrediction, and the core target was analyzed by Cytoscape. Enrichment analysis and disease ontology analysis are then performed to generate a “gene-compound-disease” network to intuitively explore the underlying pharmacological mechanisms. Finally, the anti-colorectal cancer effect of sulforaphane was verified by CCK-8 in cell level.Results: Totally 43 targets were researched and the main anti-colorectal cancer mechanisms of sulforaphane were addressed. GAPDH, SRC, MAPK1, JAK2, GSK3B were identified as hub targets. The KEGG pathway mainly related to AGW-RAGE pathway and viral carcinogenesis.Conclusion: This study successfully identified the anti-colorectal cancer mechanism of sulforaphane (10 hub genes). In addition, sulforaphane can be further studied and developed as a lead compound. The findings here provide better guidance for follow-up experiments where we identify potentially active compounds for drug discovery or health promotion.