Poster Presentation 2025 Joint Meeting of the COSA ASM and IPOS Congress

Network Pharmacology and In Silico Simulations Unveil Ziziphus jujuba as a Multi-Targeted Therapeutic Candidate for Hepatocellular Carcinoma (126487)

Abdullah Assiri 1 , Ahmad Alamri 1 , Najeeb Khan 1
  1. King Khalid University, ABHA, Saudi Arabia

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains a leading cause of cancer mortality worldwide, with limited therapeutic options and frequent resistance to current treatments. Traditional medicinal plants offer a reservoir of bioactive compounds with multi‐target potential. In this study, we applied a network pharmacology approach to elucidate the anti‐HCC mechanisms of Ziziphus jujuba (jujube). Sixteen bioactive compounds meeting oral bioavailability (OB ≥30%) and drug‐likeness (DL ≥0.18) criteria were identified via SwissADME and MolSoft. Their putative targets were predicted using SwissTargetPrediction and STITCH, and intersected with 30,096 HCC‐related genes retrieved from GeneCards and DisGeNET, yielding 595 common targets. A protein-protein interaction network constructed in STRING and visualized in Cytoscape highlighted AKT1, SRC, IL6, and TNF as hub proteins. Gene Ontology and KEGG pathway enrichment analyses revealed significant involvement in “Pathways in Cancer,” PI3K–Akt, and MAPK signaling. Molecular docking demonstrated that apigenin and Corchoionoside C bind tightly to AKT1 (-9.6 and -9.3 kcal/mol) and SRC (-8.4 and -7.4 kcal/mol), suggesting potent multi‐target inhibition. Molecular dynamics simulations further validated the stability and binding persistence of Apigenin with AKT1 and SRC over a 100 ns timescale, showing consistent hydrogen bonding, low RMSD fluctuations. These results provide robust computational evidence that Z. jujuba phytochemicals can modulate key oncogenic pathways in HCC. Our integrative in silico findings including network pharmacology, docking, and dynamic simulation lay the groundwork for future experimental validation and support the translational potential of jujube compounds as adjuncts to existing targeted therapies.