Peimine (also known as
verticine) is the major bioactive and characterized compound of Fritillariae Thunbergii Bulbus, a
traditional Chinese medicine that is most frequently used to relieve a
cough. Nevertheless, its molecular targets and mechanisms of action for
cough are still not clear. In the present study, potential targets of
peimine for
cough were identified using computational target fishing combined with manual database mining. In addition,
protein-
protein interaction (PPI), gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analyses were performed using, GeneMANIA and Database for Annotation, Visualization and Integrated Discovery (DAVID) databases respectively. Finally, an interaction network of
drug-targets-pathways was constructed using Cytoscape. The results identified 23 potential targets of
peimine associated with
cough, and suggested that MAPK1, AKT1 and PPKCB may be important targets of pemine for the treatment of
cough. The functional annotations of
protein targets were related to the regulation of immunological and neurological function through specific biological processes and related pathways. A visual representation of the multiple targets and pathways that form a network underlying the systematic actions of
peimine was generated. In summary,
peimine is predicted to exert its systemic pharmacological effects on
cough by targeting a network composed of multiple
proteins and pathways.