Rapid Profiling of Metabolites Combined with Network Pharmacology to Explore the Potential Mechanism of Sanguisorba officinalis L. against Thrombocytopenia

Sanguisorba officinalis L. (SO), a well-known herbal medicine, has been proven to show effect against thrombocytopenia. However, metabolites of SO in vivo are still unclear, and the underlying mechanism of SO against thrombocytopenia from the aspect of metabolites have not been well elucidated. In this study, an improved analytical method combined with UHPLC-QTOF MS and a molecular network was developed for the rapid characterization of metabolites in vivo based on fragmentation patterns. Then, network pharmacology (NP) was used to elucidate the potential mechanism of SO against thrombocytopenia. As a result, a total of 1678 exogenous metabolites were detected in urine, feces, plasma, and bone marrow, in which 104 metabolites were tentatively characterized. These characterized metabolites that originated from plasma, urine, and feces were then imported to the NP analysis. The results showed that the metabolites from plasma, urine, and feces could be responsible for the pharmacological activity against thrombocytopenia by regulating the PI3K-Akt, MAPK, JAK-STAT, VEGF, chemokine, actin cytoskeleton, HIF-1, and pluripotency of stem cells. This study provides a rapid method for metabolite characterization and a new perspective of underlying mechanism study from the aspect of active metabolites in vivo.