ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Autoimmune and Autoinflammatory Disorders : Autoimmune Disorders
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1675429
This article is part of the Research TopicFormation and Remodeling of Immunological Niches in Tumors: Organ-Specific Mechanisms and Inflammatory Parallels: Volume IIView all 12 articles
Unveiling the Mechanisms of American Ginseng and Achyranthes in Treatment of Primary Sjogren's Syndrome via mtDNA-cGAS-STING Pathway Insights from Network Pharmacology, Molecular Dynamics, and Experimental Validation
Provisionally accepted
- 1Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, China
- 2China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences Guang'anmen Hospital, Beijing, China
- 3China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences Institute of Basic Theory of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Beijing, China
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Objective: With the aim of clarifying the therapeutic mechanisms of the American Ginseng-Achyranthes bidentata (AG&A) herbal pair in primary Sjögren's syndrome (pSS), this study employs an integrated approach combining network pharmacology, molecular docking, molecular dynamics simulations, and animal experiments. Methods: Network pharmacology & LC-MS/MS was utilized to identify the active components and potential targets of A&A. Molecular docking and dynamics simulations were performed to evaluate binding affinity and complex stability with key targets. Animal experiments using non-obese diabetic (NOD) mice were conducted to validate symptom improvement by critical active components. Results: Network pharmacology identified baicalin and quercetin as key active components. Molecular docking revealed strong binding affinities (binding energy ≤ -8.0 kcal/mol) between these compounds and apoptosis-related proteins, BAX and CASP3. Molecular dynamics simulations confirmed the stability of these complexes. Animal experiments demonstrated that baicalin can significantly reduce inflammatory cytokines of IL-18, TNF-α, IFN-α, and IFN-β,CXCL-10 (p < 0.05), decrease mtDNA release, and downregulate cGAS-STING pathway-related proteins including cGAS, STING,CASP3, ZBP1, TBK1, p-STING, p-TBK1, IRF3, p-IRF3 and BAX. This is a provisional file, not the final typeset article Conclusion: The critical components baicalin and quercetin from AG&A, particularly in aqueous extracts, exhibit therapeutic efficacy against pSS. This study provides experimental evidence for their action mechanism through modulating the mtDNA-cGAS-STING pathway. While highlighting their therapeutic potential, additional in vivo and clinical studies are warranted to validate these findings.
Keywords: Network Pharmacology, molecular docking, cGAS-STING pathway, mtDNA, Sjögren's syndrome
Received: 30 Jul 2025; Accepted: 22 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Xia, Song, Chen and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yanjun Liu, yanjundoctor@126.com
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