Network Pharmacologic Analysis of Tuber Tannin and Copper Sulfate as Mordants and Anti-viral Agents in the Treatment of COVID-19

Tuber is a widely applied ingredient in cooking, medicine, and textile coloring since ancient time. The long-term wide range application has proved its safety in day-to-day usage. The antibacterial and antiviral properties were discovered during the covid-19 Pandemic, but so far there is no research on its pharmaceutical properties in combating of the disease. In this research, the method of Network Pharmacology was applied to explore the medicinal properties and the mechanism behind it. The PubChem database was used to screen the effective targets in Tuber tannin. GeneCard and OMIM databases were used to identify targets related to Covid-19. The STRING database was used to filter the intersection of Tuber and Target-disease. Cytoscape was used to construct a complex target interaction and protein-protein interaction network, which described the relations between disease target and biological reactions. KEGG pathway and GO enrichment analysis was applied to explore its mechanism of action. With all the actions above, the interaction between Tuber tannin and Covid-19 was verified. A total of 66 intersection targets and 573 were screened out. It was further determined that a total of 921 biological processes (BP), 13 cell component (CC), and 32 molecular functions (MF) were obtained (P value<0.05). The results show that there is a stable biological process between Tuber tannin and the Covid-19 target. The analysis of the obtained network pharmacology results can predict and discuss the multi-target and multi-path mechanism of Tuber tannin as an effective way to prevent and control Covid-19.