Exploring the pathways and targets of Shexiang Baoxin pill for coronary heart disease through a network pharmacology approach

Objective: To investigate the network pharmacology of Shexiang Baoxin pill (SBP) and systematically analyze the mechanisms of SBP. Methods: In this study, we excavated all the targets of 26 constituents of SBP which were identified in rat plasma though literature mining and target calculation (reverse docking and similarity search) and analyzed the multiple pharmacology actions of SBP comprehensively through a network pharmacology approach. Results: In the end, a total of 330 Homo sapiens targets were identified for 26 blood constituents of SBP. Moreover, the pathway enrichment analysis found that these targets mapped into 171 KEGG pathways and 31 of which were more enriched. Among these identified pathways, 3 pathways were selected for analyzing the mechanisms of SBP for treating coronary heart disease. Conclusion: This study systematically illustrated the mechanisms of the SBP by analyzing the corresponding “drug-target-pathway-disease” interaction network.