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OBJECTIVE: To probe into the mechanism of Liangge Powder inhibiting cytokine storm in acute lung injury ( ALI) based on network pharmacology and molecular docking. METHODS: The active ingredients and action targets of Liangge Powder were screened from the traditional Chinese medicine systems pharmacology database and analysis platform; the disease targets of ALI were obtained from online mendelian inheritance in man, Gene Cards and other medical databases. Uniprot database was used to query the genes corresponding to the targets, R software and String database were adopted to construct protein-protein interaction ( PPI) network, Cytoscape software was used to construct herbal-compound-target interaction network, R software was used to perform gene ontology (GO) function enrichment analysis and Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes ( KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis, so as to predict the molecular mechanisms. Autodock Vina software was adopted to conduct molecular docking on the core components of Liangge Powder with IL-I~, IL-6, TNF-a receptors and glycogen synthase kinase 3~. RESULTS: Totally 149 active ingredients and 23 7 targets were found in Liangge Powder in the treatment of ALI, the key targets involving AKTI, IL-6 and MAPK3, etc. ; the GO functional enrichment was mainly biological processes, including oxidative stress, lipopolysaccharide response and bacteriogenic molecule, etc. The KEGG pathway mainly involved PI3K-Akt, AGE-RAGE and TNF pathways, etc. ; results of molecular docking showed that the binding forces of core compounds, such as phillyrin, stigmasterol, glabridin, pterocarpin and quercetin, was similar to that of clinically used anti-inflammatory drugs, among which phillyrin was the strongest. CONCLUSIONS: Liangge Powder may act on targets and pathways of AKTl, IL-6, PI3K-Akt and AGE-RAGE through various active ingredients such as phillyrin and and quercetin, and exert therapeutic effects on ALI in terms of anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, antioxidant and immunoregulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]