Metabolomics approach reveals vital role of Huangqi in Huangqi Jianzhong Tang against chronic atrophic gastritis coupled with molecular docking and BAWP

OBJECTIVE To explore the monarch contribution of Huangqi（HQ） to the classical prescription Huangqi Jianzhong Tang（HQJZ） in the treatment of chronic atrophic gastritis（CAG）. METHODS We used;H-NMR and LC-MS based metabolomics to analyze the serum and mitochondria metabolic profiles related to the action of HQJZ with or without HY（HQJZ knocked out HQ）. Meanwhile, bodyweight variety, pathological examination, biochemical indexes of gastric juice and mitochondria, were also used to evaluate the efficacy of HQJZ and HY. RESULTS The results showed that HQJZ was better in the regulation of the traditional pharmacology indexes than HY against CAG. Metabolomics analysis showed that the serum and mitochondria metabolic features of HQJZ and HY deviated from CAG rats. 12 and 6 involved metabolic pathways were characterized as the metabolic efficacy of HQJZ and HY by Metabo Analyst 4.0. Six out of them were deduced to involve into the monarch role of HQ in the whole formula. Three important pathways, including linoleic acid metabolism,glycolysis or gluconeogenesis, butanoate metabolism,were further screened out to be the most important pathways related to the efficacy of HQ by Systems Dock analysis and binding ability weighted polypharmacology index（BAWP）. CONCLUSION A novel method was constructed to study the mechanism of HQ in the treatment of CAG based on metabolomics coupled with molecular docking and BAWP.