Elucidation of the mechanism, target gene, and the most active parts of Fuzheng Yiliu formula in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma

Fuzheng Yiliu formula (FZYL) is a traditional Chinese medicine prescription in treating hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) that can improve immunity and inhibit tumor, but its mechanism and molecular targets remain elusive. In this study, we seek to identify the active ingredients, the oral bioavailability, drug similarity, and target genes of FZYL. Then the possible targets of FZYL were selected by differential expression investigation and weighted co-expression framework investigation based on the data from the databases of Cancer Genome Atlas database and Gene Expression Omnibus. Ten hub genes of FZYL were identified according to the degree score, and assessed in terms of immune infiltration, tumor stemness, and tumor micro-scale environment of HCC. The most important active components of FZYL are quercetin, formononetin and (+) - medicarpin. The hub genes screened by bioinformatics were BUB1, RRM2, MYC, CHEK1, MCM2, TOP2A, CCNB2, CDKN3, CCNA2, and CCNB1. The expressing state achieved by most hub genes in the Wound healing immunization infiltration subdivided type reached over that in the rest subdivided types. Moreover, we identified that all ten hub genes affect the DNAss or RNAss. Moreover, all ten hub genes also affect StromalScore or ImmuneScore. According to the mentioned results, FZYL is likely to impact tumor inhibition by affecting immune infiltration, tumor stemness, and tumor micro-scale environment of HCC.