Mechanistic investigations of ellagic acid via topological and functional analysis of its protein interaction network

Ellagic acid is a phenolic compound which is the potent inhibitor of carcinogenesis. However, the exact mode of action is still not known. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the action mechanism of ellagic acid based on network pharmacology, protein-protein interaction database and evaluation of biological processes through Cytoscape plugin ClueGO. The protein targets of ellagic acid were retrieved through TCMSP and STITCH database. The interaction between the retrieved targets of ellagic acid was investigated by STITCH, GO enrichment and pathway enrichment analysis. The study revealed that there are total of 20 protein targets as a result of target search. In addition, 42 GO terms were also retrieved, which were found to be related with biological process. 10 GO terms related to several molecular processes and 2 GO terms achieved by analyzing gene function were annotated based on Kyoto Encyclopedia of Gene and Genomic pathways. Most of the terms were found to be associated with anticancer and antioxidant pathways such as NME1-NME2, and CA2 are involved in treating cancer metastasis and suppressing carcinogenesis respectively. Ellagic acid has potential of treating cancer, pigmentation, oxidative stress and viral infection with an underlying mechanism of cancer suppression. This study can be used for better understanding of mode of action of ellagic acid. Still further research studies such as docking and MD stimulation are required to elaborate the pharmacological and toxicological effects of ellagic acid.