Network Pharmacology-Based Analysis and In Vitro Experiments Validation Reveal Tormentic Acid Induces Apoptosis via PI3K/AKT/HSP90 Pathway in HepG2 Cells.

Tormentic acid (TA) has demonstrated potential anti-hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) effects. This study aimed to explore the anti-HCC effect and underlying mechanisms of TA via network pharmacology, molecular docking, molecular dynamics simulation and in vitro experiments. In this study, HCC-related genes were obtained from the GeneCards OMIM, and GEO databases. The targets of TA were collected from Swiss Target Prediction, TargetNet, and the PharmMapper database. A protein-protein interaction network of TA anti-HCC target genes was constructed using the STRING database and visualized by Cytoscape. The potential anti-HCC targets of TA were then identified through GO and KEGG pathway enrichment analyses using the DAVID database. Molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulation were performed to evaluate the binding affinity and structural stability of TA-target complexes. For the in vitro experiments, the CCK-8 assay was employed to assess the effects of TA on HepG2 cell viability. Apoptosis in HepG2 cells was detected via flow cytometry. Western blotting was used to elucidate the underlying molecular mechanisms of TA. Integrating network pharmacology and bioinformatics analyses revealed that the anti-HCC effect of TA was closely associated with apoptosis and the PI3K/AKT/HSP90 pathway. Molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulation demonstrated that TA-target protein complexes maintained marked structural stability and exhibited favorable kinetic properties. In vitro experiments showed that TA significantly inhibited the proliferation of HepG2 cells and induced apoptosis. Western blot results further indicated that TA treatment increased the expression of Bax while decreasing the expression levels of PI3K, AKT, HSP90, and Bcl-2. TA suppressed the proliferation of HepG2 cells and induced apoptosis, possibly by regulating the PI3K/AKT/HSP90 signaling pathway.