Biological Perspective of Balur Therapy: A Network Pharmacology Study

Abstract

AbstractBalur is an integrative topical medication from Indonesia using herbal medicines: Moringa oleifera, Nicotiana tabacum, and Coffea arabica. Balur can be applied to treat various diseases including chronic diseases and autism because it performs to scavenge free radicals and release electron of heavy metals. However, the complexity of the balur mechanism as medical therapy needs a comprehensive understanding. Not only from a modern physics perspective but also from a biological perspective to explore the effect of active compounds on the human body. In this study, we proposed the computational study to understand balur therapy from a biological perspective though the molecular mechanism. Active compounds of 3 herbal medicines Balur were collected from Dr. Duke’s Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases. Proteins target related to active compounds were obtained from SwissTargetPrediction and PharmMapper Server. Gene Ontology (GO) was conducted to verify the potential mechanism. Moreover, network analysis was conducted with Cytoscape. We found that the active compounds were contributed to the therapeutic effectiveness through a molecular mechanism. This study demonstrated the multi-compounds and multi-target of balur’s herbal medicines to treat disease.