Network pharmacology-based identification for the therapeutic mechanism of Zhizi in the depression

Background: Depression is an emotional and psychiatric disease with the main symptoms of prolonged depression, delayed thinking, and decreased movement. However, the treatment of depression is still a clinical problem. Zhizi (Gardeniae Fructus) is a Chinese herbal medicine that has been widely used for decades to treat depression. In this study, bioinformatics analysis were used to predict the molecular mechanism of Zhizi in the treatment of depression. Methods: Through the Chinese herbal medicine pharmacological data and analysis platform, the active ingredients of Zhizi were retrieved and screened. At the same time, the therapeutic target proteins for depression were screened from databases that registered various known disease targets. After that, the interaction network between "knowles" and depression was constructed to enrich the key nodes of the analysis and validated with western blot experiments Results: Thirteen branching compounds and 112 depression candidate genes were identified and a "branching-compound-target-depression" network was successfully constructed. The above targe revealed by GO and KEGG enrichment analysis explain that drug treatment of the disease may be achieved by affecting apoptosis-related signaling pathways in depressed patients. Western blot experiments validated the above results. Conclusion: Zhizi may improve depression by regulating autophagy and apoptosis in cells, which may be a new strategy for the depression.