BATMAN-TCM: a Bioinformatics Analysis Tool for Molecular mechANism of Traditional Chinese Medicine

TLDR

Traditional Chinese Medicine, with millennia of clinical use, is increasingly applied worldwide, yet its complex ingredients and interactions make elucidating molecular mechanisms difficult. The authors created BATMAN‑TCM, the first online bioinformatics platform to uncover the molecular mechanisms of TCM. BATMAN‑TCM predicts ingredient targets, performs pathway, Gene Ontology, and disease enrichment analyses, visualizes ingredient‑target‑pathway networks, compares multiple TCMs, and was applied to Qishen Yiqi dripping Pill. Using BATMAN‑TCM, the study identified the renin‑angiotensin system as a key mediator of QSYQ’s cardioprotective effects, providing the first experimental validation of this pathway. BATMAN‑TCM is available at http://bionet.ncpsb.org/batman-tcm.

Abstract

Abstract Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), with a history of thousands of years of clinical practice, is gaining more and more attention and application worldwide. And TCM-based new drug development, especially for the treatment of complex diseases is promising. However, owing to the TCM’s diverse ingredients and their complex interaction with human body, it is still quite difficult to uncover its molecular mechanism, which greatly hinders the TCM modernization and internationalization. Here we developed the first online Bioinformatics Analysis Tool for Molecular mechANism of TCM (BATMAN-TCM). Its main functions include 1) TCM ingredients’ target prediction; 2) functional analyses of targets including biological pathway, Gene Ontology functional term and disease enrichment analyses; 3) the visualization of ingredient-target-pathway/disease association network and KEGG biological pathway with highlighted targets; 4) comparison analysis of multiple TCMs. Finally, we applied BATMAN-TCM to Qishen Yiqi dripping Pill (QSYQ) and combined with subsequent experimental validation to reveal the functions of renin-angiotensin system responsible for QSYQ’s cardioprotective effects for the first time. BATMAN-TCM will contribute to the understanding of the “multi-component, multi-target and multi-pathway” combinational therapeutic mechanism of TCM and provide valuable clues for subsequent experimental validation, accelerating the elucidation of TCM’s molecular mechanism. BATMAN-TCM is available at http://bionet.ncpsb.org/batman-tcm .