Food and Medicine Homology Substance in Cancer Treatment: Mechanism of Astragalus against Pancreatic Cancer

This work explores the mechanism of food and medicine homology substance—astragalus—against pancreatic cancer (PC). PC is a notably lethal solid tumor, often presenting with a poor clinical prognosis and typically diagnosed at an advanced stage. Food and medicine homology herbs possess dual attributes as both functional foods and therapeutic agents, which showed promise as a treatment strategy demonstrating substantial inhibitory effects with reduced side effects and toxicity about PC. Astragalus (HQ, also known as Huang-Qi in Chinese), a herb that falls under the category of food and medicine homology, shows potential in combating PC. To explore its underlying mechanism, we utilized network pharmacology to identify potential compounds and their related targets of PC and molecular docking techniques to assess the binding affinity between the identified compound ds and targets. The presence of quercetin, kaempferol, isorhamnetin, and formononetin in HQ provides compelling evidence for their pivotal role as key constituents in combating PC. Our findings suggest that HQ potentially regulated MMP-9 through TNF/TGF, thereby exerting its inhibitory effects on PC. This study elucidates a novel mechanism by which a natural herb exhibits anti-PC capacity.