Systems Pharmacology Ⅲ: Application Progress in Interpretation of Holistic Mechanism of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Abstract:

Holistic medicine is an interdisciplinary field that integrates all types of biological information (proteins, small molecules, tissues, organs, external environmental signals, etc.) to provide predictable and operational models for healthcare and disease treatment. Despite the global and integrative character of this discipline, scientific evidences to clarify the mechanism of holistic medicine is still lacking. Systems pharmacology, as a newly developed discipline based on the interdisciplinary and integration of classical pharmacology, computer technology, bioinformatics, and network pharmacology, has systematically studied the interaction between drugs and the human body, as well as its law and nature at the molecular, cellular, organ and network levels. Since its birth in 2011, this discipline has been widely used in the research of the promotion of holistic medicine, compound analysis, the development of new drugs, and interpretation of basic theories of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). In this paper, in order to provide new methods and ideas for the modernization of holistic medicine, the authors introduce the research ideas of systems pharmacology of TCM in detail, and the mechanism of holistic medicine in the treatment of complex diseases is explained by sorting out the researches of systems pharmacology on multi-component, multi-target, multi-pathway, multi-function, compatibility of TCM, etc.