Learning History to Develop Traditional Chinese Medicine

Abstract

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been proven to be remarkable, effective, and safe through thousands of years clinical practice. Its unique diagnosis and treatment methods and particular thinking when medicating are favorably recognized by more and more people and countries. However, the active constituents and molecular mechanisms related to their therapeutic effectiveness are still unclear. The highlight of this presentation is the learning from the valuable traditional theory of TCM instead of using TCM only as a source of natural compounds, and that employing various modern chemical and biological technologies is a short cut method for investigating the effective foundation of TCM. This method has allowed for the discovery of numerous leading compounds with diverse structures and novel molecular mechanisms in our lab. Research efforts following the above outlined ideas has provided significant scientific evidence for the efficacy and safety of TCM and has contributed to the modernization and globalization of TCM. In this presentation, I will introduce recent relevant research examples, which demonstrate and highlight that learning from history provides a better way to face the future of TCM study.