Use of an integrated multi-omics approach to unlock advantage of natural products for tone management: San Bai Decoction as case study

Summary: Abstract Body: Increasing concern of skin disorders has resulted in high demand for the development of superior cosmetic products. TCM formulae (consisting of 2 or more medicinal herbs) has been used over thousands of years for maintaining healthy aging, beauty and wellbeing in China. Therefore, it’s critical to discover its scientific significances of synergistic effects of TCM formulae and underlying mechanisms from perspective of systems biology. The aim of our study was to demonstrate the importance of the network pharmacology combined with multi-omics analysis in developing cosmeceuticals from TCM by using San Bai Decoction (poria, licorice, peony and atractylodes, SBD) as case study. Firstly, we constructed compound-target map to illustrate the interaction amongst the chemical constituents (n=444) and regulated genes (n=845) based on public domain database, and then overlayed with HPLC fingerprint to identify 72 representative compounds and characterized 22 lead bioactives by LC-MS/MS for SBD. Secondly, we detected the perturbations of whole-transcriptome gene expressions in SBD-treated keratinocytes and melanocytes separately and identified significant changes in SBD-treated 3D skin model under UVB exposure through integrated transcriptomic and proteomic analysis, and then we constructed a signature network, consisting of 5395 genes/142 proteins to illustrate the comprehensive biological basis of the multifaceted skin properties of SBD, including skin development, keratinization, cell adhesion, cell cycle relevant processes and inflammatory response. The outcome provides mechanistic insights into the multiple functions of SBD. Altogether, these results illustrated that the multi-omics paves a way to reduce time and cost of the development of nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals from TCM formulae. Xuelan Gu¹, Hong Zhang¹, Qiongzhi Wu¹, Qiong Gu¹, Lei Han¹ 1. Unilever R&D Shanghai, Shanghai, China. Epidermal Structure and Barrier Function