OBJECTIVE  To explore the compatibility rules of traditional Chinese medicines used to enhance immunity in compound patent prescriptions using data mining method, and analyze the potential mechanism of action of core drugs by network pharmacology and molecular docking technology.

  METHODS  The patent data of the immunity enhancing compound of traditional Chinese medicine from the State Intellectual Property Office was mined, the frequency of traditional Chinese medicine, association rules and complex network were analyzed, and core drugs were screened. The TCMSP platform was used to screen the active ingredients of core drugs and predict the targets. Immune-related targets were screened from disease databases OMIM, DrugBank, GeneCards and Uniprot to obtain the intersection targets of core Chinese medicine and immunity. Protein interaction (PPI) analysis and gene ontology (GO) function and pathway enrichment analysis of Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) were performed for intersection targets. Molecular docking technology was used to verify the active ingredients and key targets of the drug.

  RESULTS  According to the analysis of Chinese herbal compound patents, five core drugs were obtained: Astragalus, ginseng, Wolfberry, poria, Angelica. The effective active ingredients corresponding to 214 targets, 1 784 immune-related targets, 55 intersection targets, the key action targets are RELA, TNF, TP53, IL-6. The results of GO analysis showed that the main regulation aspects were the response to bacteria origin molecules, the response to lipopolysaccharide, and the response to biological stimuli. There were 160 KEGG pathways, mainly involving lipid and atherosclerosis, Chagas disease, TNF signaling pathway, cancer pathway and other signaling pathways. The molecular docking results showed that quercetin and kaempferol could bind to RELA, TNF, TP53 and IL-6.

  CONCLUSION  The traditional Chinese medicines used in the patent literature to enhance immunity are mainly deficiency tonic drugs, and the main effective components are quercetin, kaempferol and other compounds. RELA, TNF, TP53 and IL-6 are the key targets, which play the role of enhancing immunity through multiple pathways such as lipid, atherosclerosis, Chagas disease, TNF signaling pathway and cancer pathway.