Overview on method and strategy of therapeutic material basis in traditional Chinese medicine by multidisciplinary approach

Abstract

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has a good reputation for preventing or healing diseases in clinic due to its higher efficacy, minor toxicity and abundant resources. Screening bioactive components in TCMs is not only crucial for clarifying their action mechanisms, but also the basis of their safety and quality control. TCM is characterized by multiple components, multiple targets and multiple mechanisms, however the complex composition of TCM makes it difficult to study the therapeutic material basis which has become the bottleneck in the process of its modernization and internationalization. Recently, with the rapid development of modern technologies and the unceasing progress of various disciplines, multidisciplinary approach, such as analytical chemistry, chemistry of TCM, pharmacology, cell biology, systems biology and bioinformatics has been successfully applied to the study of TCM. Multidisciplinary approach realizes the communication and interaction of multi-discipline, and accelerates the research and development of TCM. This review summarizes the application of multidisciplinary approach which may have certain potential of bringing new thoughts to TCM research and provide references for screening and identification of therapeutic material basis of TCMs.