Molecular Basis for Treating COVID-19 with Official Chinese Herbal Formula LCTE

Chinese herbal formulas, notably the lung-cleaning and toxicity-excluding (LCTE) soup has played an important role in treating an ongoing and life-threating worldwide pandemic, COVID-19 (caused by SARS-CoV-2). Applying LCTE outside of China may be difficult for medical society to approach due to the unfamiliar rationale behind its application in terms of Traditional Chinese Medicine. To overcome this barrier, we illuminate the chemical and biological mechanisms behind LCTE’s effects, by exploring the chemical compounds contained in LCTE ingredients, the proteins targeted by these compounds as well as undertaking the network pharmacology analysis. The results disclosed that LCTE contains compounds with the potential to directly inhibit SARS-CoV-2 and inflammation, and that the compounds targeted proteins significantly related to the main symptoms seen in COVID-19. The general effect of LCTE was to affect the pathways involved in viral and other microbe infection, inflammation/cytokine response, and lung diseases. Our work provided chemical biological explanations for using LCTE to treat COVID-19.