ZHANG, J.; Li, J.

Background: Dendrobium Officinale is a rare Chinese herbal medicine, and its stem has various medical effects. Currently, the sprouts of Dendrobium Officinale can be mass-produced by stem-cell technology, but its biological active ingredients and medical effects are unknown. The therapeutic ability of the stem cell-originated Dendrobium Officinale (SDO) for allergic rhinitis (AR) was demonstrated in the preliminary experiment on mice. Aim: Metabolomics methods were employed to analyze the differences in metabolomics between SDO and commercial Dendrobium officinale stem (COM) water extracts, and verify the bioactive ingredients related to treating AR. A network pharmacology-based strategy was applied to investigate potential therapeutic targets and mechanisms of SDO against AR. Molecular docking was performed for validation. Materials and Methods: This study used HPLC-MS/MS-based metabolomics to analyze the metabolomic differences between SDO and COM water extract, and identified some active ingredients related to AR treatment. Network pharmacology was used to screen the potential targets for SDO treats AR, establish protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks, and perform enrichment analysis (KEGG/GO) to explore the signalling pathways. Molecular docking was applied to further verify the result. Results: The metabolomic differences between SDO and COM were demonstrated. 2053 differential metabolites were found and 6 bioactive ingredients related to AR treatment were verified. 121 common targets of SDO and AR were identified in network pharmacology, the top ten core targets were screened based on the PPI network, and 7 possible therapeutic mechanisms that SDO treat AR were speculated. Molecular docking proved that each core target combined well with the validated bioactive ingredients. Conclusion: This study compared the metabolomes of SDO and COM, and explored the bioactive components, therapeutic targets, and potential mechanisms of SDO in treating AR. It explored the medical potential of SDO for the first time and provided a promising direction for the large-scale medical application of Dendrobium Officinale. Keywords: Dendrobium Officinale, allergic rhinitis, metabolomic, network pharmacology