Decoding Asthma Therapy: The Role of VEGFA and HIF1A in Yanghe Pingchuan Granule's Mechanism

This study integrated network pharmacology, bioinformatics, and experimental validation to investigate the glycolysis-related targets of Yanghe Pingchuan granule (YPG) in asthma therapy. Active ingredients of YPG were screened via TCMSP, with targets identified through UniProt. Asthma-associated differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were extracted from GEO datasets, whereas asthma- and glycolysis-related targets were mined from GeneCards, OMIM, TTD, DrugBank and MSigDB. Venn analysis identified three key genes (GSTP1, VEGFA and HIF1A) linked to HIF-1 and VEGF signalling pathways. Molecular docking confirmed strong binding between core YPG compounds (quercetin, kaempferol and luteolin) and these targets. ROC analysis demonstrated high diagnostic value of VEGFA and HIF1A for asthma. In vivo validation showed that YPG significantly downregulated GSTP1, VEGFA and HIF1A expression in asthmatic rats. Our findings establish VEGFA and HIF1A as pivotal glycolysis-associated targets in asthma, indicating that YPG exerts anti-asthma effects by modulating these critical regulators.