Potential of Clinacanthus nutans in the treatment of diabetes mellitus and molecular mechanisms prediction based on network pharmacology
Nurlaili Susanti(1,2*), Arifa Mustika(3), Junaidi Khotib(4)

(1) Doctoral Program of Medical Science, Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia
(2) Faculty of Medicine and Health Science, UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim, Malang, Indonesia
(3) Department of Anatomy, Histology, and Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia
(4) Department of Pharmacy Practice, Faculty of Pharmacy, Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia.
*)nurlaili.susanti-2020[at]fk.unair.ac.id

Abstract

Clinacanthus nutans is rich in phytoconstituents and is considered a promising medicinal plant. This study aims to review the potential of C. nutans as an anti-diabetic and to explore its molecular mechanism based on network pharmacology. A literature review was conducted on articles, obtained from Scopus and Google Scholar databases, showed that C. nutans has an anti-diabetic effect. For network pharmacology analysis, the bioactive compounds of C. nutans was acquired from previous related research and SwissADME was used to predict its Drug-likeness based on Lipinski rule and oral bioavailability score. The overlapping between diabetes-associated genes, retrieved by DisGeNET database, and the predicted C. nutans target genes were visualized by Venn Diagram. Protein-protein interaction networks of these overlapping genes were identified using String-db. Those interactions construct a PPI network which is then assessed by Cytoscape 3.9.1 software to analyze potential genes and then used to construct a compound-target network. Finally, the signaling pathways in which these genes are involved were analyzed based on the KEGG database. These results imply that C. nutans has potential as anti-diabetic through several signaling pathways associated with diabetes mellitus. This provides a scientific basis for further research on the anti-diabetic mechanism of C. nutans.

Keywords: Clinacanthus nutans, diabetes, medicine, network pharmacology

Topic: Bioinformatics