BATMAN-TCM: a Bioinformatics Analysis Tool for Molecular mechANism of Traditional Chinese Medicine

• DOI: 10.1038/srep21146
• Publication Date: 2016-02-16T11:40:55Z
• Authors: Zhongyang Liu; Feifei Guo; Yong Wang; Chun Li; Xinlei Zhang; Honglei Li; Lihong Diao; Jiangyong Gu; Wei Wang; Dong Li; Fuchu He
• Keywords: 0303 health sciences; Computational Biology; Reproducibility of Results; Web Browser; Article; 3. Good health; 03 medical and health sciences; Gene Expression Regulation; ROC Curve; Drug Discovery; Humans; Gene Regulatory Networks; Medicine, Chinese Traditional; Signal Transduction

AbstractTraditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), with a history of thousands of years of clinical practice, is gaining more and more attention and application worldwide. And TCM-based new drug development, especially for the treatment of complex diseases is promising. However, owing to the TCM’s diverse ingredients and their complex interaction with human body, it is still quite difficult to uncover its molecular mechanism, which greatly hinders the TCM modernization and internationalization. Here we developed the first online Bioinformatics Analysis Tool for Molecular mechANism of TCM (BATMAN-TCM). Its main functions include 1) TCM ingredients’ target prediction; 2) functional analyses of targets including biological pathway, Gene Ontology functional term and disease enrichment analyses; 3) the visualization of ingredient-target-pathway/disease association network and KEGG biological pathway with highlighted targets; 4) comparison analysis of multiple TCMs. Finally, we applied BATMAN-TCM to Qishen Yiqi dripping Pill (QSYQ) and combined with subsequent experimental validation to reveal the functions of renin-angiotensin system responsible for QSYQ’s cardioprotective effects for the first time. BATMAN-TCM will contribute to the understanding of the “multi-component, multi-target and multi-pathway” combinational therapeutic mechanism of TCM and provide valuable clues for subsequent experimental validation, accelerating the elucidation of TCM’s molecular mechanism. BATMAN-TCM is available athttp://bionet.ncpsb.org/batman-tcm.