Mechanisms of Intervertebral Disc Degeneration Treatment with Deer Antlers Based on Network Pharmacology and Molecular Docking

Background. With the aging of the population, the prevalence of IVDD increases preoperatively. How to better treat IVDD has become an important clinical issue. Deer antlers proved to have a great effect on the treatment of IVDD in many studies, but the molecular mechanism has not been clarified. Objective. To investigate the molecular mechanism and target of deer antlers in the treatment of IVDD. Methods. Compounds from deer antlers were collected and targets were predicted using HERB, TCMSP, TCMID, SwissADME, and SwissTargetPrediction. Collection of disease targets for IVDD was done using GeneCards, TTD, DrugBank, DisGeNET, and OMIM. Cytoscape 3.7.2, AutoDock Vina (v1.1.2), and R software were used for data analysis and the construction of network diagrams. Results. A total of 5 active compounds from deer antlers were screened and 104 therapeutic targets were predicted. A total of 1023 IVDD disease targets were collected. Subsequently, PPI network prediction analysis was performed for disease and treatment targets, and 112 core targets were collected after screening. After obtaining the core target, we used the clusterProfiler software package of R software to carry out GO and KEGG enrichment analyses for the core target and plot the bubble maps. According to the GO enrichment results, the main biological processes of IVDD treatment by deer antlers lie in the rhythmic process, mRNA catabolic process, and G1/S transition of the mitotic cell cycle. KEGG results were mainly related to the PI3K-Akt signaling pathway, thyroid hormone signaling pathway, and Notch signaling pathway. Molecular docking results showed that estrone had the best docking results on ESR1. Conclusion. Deer antlers are rich in various compounds that can prevent the development of IVDD by upregulating the PI3K-Akt signaling pathway and Notch signaling pathway. Its key compounds estradiol and estrone can reduce the inflammatory response and oxidative stress in tissues and organs, thus slowing down the progression of IVDD. Estrone, the active compound in deer antlers, was found by molecular docking to have good results against ESR1, the target of the disease, which may be a potential site for drug therapy.