Asian Journal
Of Traditional Medicines

Abstract: Plant-derived natural products play a vital role in the discovery of new drug molecules and could be used for development of novel therapeutic drugs for a specific disease target. Literature review suggested that the plants of Simaroubaceae show strong inhibitory efficacy against various types of cancer cells. Therefore, it is necessary to identify selective anticancer agents from this family. The present studies of anticancer active ingredients in the Simaroubaceae family mainly focus on quassinoids in the genus Brucea, and the anticancer activities of the alkaloids are not attractive to the researchers. To illuminate the anti-cancer activities of alkaloids from the family Simaroubaceae, a compound database based on the methods of network pharmacology prediction was established in this paper by constructing the compound-cancer target network. According to the analysis of the model, the most effective anticancer compounds in the plants of the family Simaroubaceae might be bis-β-carboline alkaloid (Quassidines D), and the most potential targets might be EGFR and Hsp90. We believe that our present study is useful and may provide important clues for novel antineoplastics.

Key words: alkaloid, Simaroubaceae, network pharmacology, anticancer activity