Therapeutic targets of corn silk polysaccharide on hypoglycemic effect and mechanisms: Experimental validation of network pharmacology analysis

We investigated the hypoglycemic effect and mechanism of corn silk polysaccharide in diabetic mice. Through network pharmacology, we found that corn silk polysaccharides exerted hypoglycemic effects through 104 therapeutic diabetic targets, MAPK and dopaminergic synaptic signaling pathways. Molecular docking experiments showed that the core target SRC had the best binding activity to D-Mannose, with a binding energy of -6.012 KJ/mol. In-vivo experiments demonstrated that corn silk polysaccharide reduced blood glucose level, glucose tolerance and improved body weight disorders in T2DM mice (P<0.01). In addition, corn silk polysaccharide can promote the recovery of pancreatic islet cell morphology in T2DM mice and the recovery effect was more obvious in large doses of corn silk polysaccharide. This suggests that corn silk polysaccharide can treat type 2 diabetes mellitus through multi-targets and multiple pathways. Meanwhile, corn silk polysaccharide extract had positive effects on blood glucose, body weight disorder and glucose tolerance in T2DM mice, which might be accomplished by restoring the morphology of pancreatic islet cells.