Ban‐Xia‐Xie‐Xin‐Tang (BXXXT) is a classical formula from Shang‐Han‐Lun which is one of the earliest books of TCM clinical practice. In this work, we investigated the therapeutic mechanisms of BXXXT for the treatment of multiple diseases using a network pharmacology approach. Here three BXXXT representative diseases (colitis, diabetes mellitus, and gastric cancer) were discussed, and we focus on in silico methods that integrate drug‐likeness screening, target prioritizing, and multilayer network extending. A total of 140 core targets and 72 representative compounds were finally identified to elucidate the pharmacology of BXXXT formula. After constructing multilayer networks, a good overlap between BXXXT nodes and disease nodes was observed at each level, and the network‐based proximity analysis shows that the relevance between the formula targets and disease genes was significant according to the shortest path distance (SPD) and a random walk with restart (RWR) based scores for each disease. We found that there were 22 key pathways significantly associated with BXXXT, and the therapeutic effects of BXXXT were likely addressed by regulating a combination of targets in a modular pattern. Furthermore, the synergistic effects among BXXXT herbs were highlighted by elucidating the molecular mechanisms of individual herbs, and the traditional theory of “Jun‐Chen‐Zuo‐Shi” of TCM formula was effectively interpreted from a network perspective. The proposed approach provides an effective strategy to uncover the mechanisms of action and combinatorial rules of BXXXT formula in a holistic manner.

It has now become clear that in silico prediction of ADME (absorption, distribution, metabolism, and elimination) characteristics is an important component of the drug discovery process. Therefore, there has been considerable interest in the development of in silico modeling of ADME prediction in recent years. Despite the advances in this field, there remains challenges when facing the unbalanced and high dimensionality problems simultaneously. In this work, we introduce a novel adaptive ensemble classification framework named as AECF to deal with the above issues. AECF includes four components which are (1) data balancing, (2) generating individual models, (3) combining individual models, and (4) optimizing the ensemble. We considered five sampling methods, seven base modeling techniques, and ten ensemble rules to build a choice pool. The proper route of constructing predictive models was determined automatically according to the imbalance ratio (IR). With the adaptive characteristics of AECF, it can be used to work on the different kinds of ADME data, and the balanced data is a special case in AECF. We evaluated the performance of our approach using five extensive ADME datasets concerning Caco-2 cell permeability (CacoP), human intestinal absorption (HIA), oral bioavailability (OB), and P-glycoprotein (P-gp) binders (substrates/inhibitors, PS/PI). The performance of AECF was evaluated on two independent datasets, and the average AUC values were 0.8574–0.8602, 0.8968–0.9182, 0.7821–0.7981, 0.8139–0.8311, and 0.8874–0.8898 for CacoP, HIA, OB, PS and PI, respectively. Our results show that AECF can provide better performance and generality compared with individual models and two representative ensemble methods bagging and boosting. Furthermore, the degree of complementarity among the AECF ensemble members was investigated for the purpose of elucidating the potential advantages of our framework. We found that AECF can effectively select complementary members to construct predictive models by our auto-adaptive optimization approach, and the additional diversity in both sample and feature space mainly contribute to the complementarity of ensemble members.

Banxia Xiexin decoction (BXD), a famous traditional Chinese prescription constituted by Pinelliae Rhizoma, Zingiberis Rhizoma, Scutellariae Radix, Coptidis Rhizoma, Ginseng Radix et Rhizoma, Jujubae Fructus and Glycyrrhizae Radix et Rhizoma Praeparata Cum Mell, has notable characteristics of acrid-opening, bitter down-bearing and sweet-tonification, interfering with tumors, gastrointestinal diseases, central nervous system diseases and much more. Based on the wide clinical applications, current investigations of BXD focused on several aspects: chemical analysis to explore the underlying substrates responsible for the therapeutic effects; basic studies on pharmacological actions of the whole prescription or of those representative ingredients to demonstrate the intriguing molecular targets for specific pathological processes; pharmacokinetic feature studies of single or all components of BXD to reveal the chemical basis and synergistic actions contributing to the pharmacological and clinically therapeutic effects. In this review, we summarized the main achievements of phytochemical, pharmacological, clinical and pharmacokinetic profiles of BXD and its herbal or pharmacologically active chemicals, as well as discussions of our understanding which further reveals the significance of BXD clinically.