Network Pharmacology: A New Approach for Chinese Herbal Medicine Research

By Gui-biao Zhang, Qing-ya Li, Qilong Chen, Shibing Su. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2013

315 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The dominant paradigm of “one gene, one target, one disease” has influenced many aspects of drug discovery strategy. However, in recent years, it has been appreciated that many effective drugs act on multiple targets rather than a single one. As an integrated multidisciplinary concept, network pharmacology, which is based on system biology and polypharmacology, affords a novel network mode of “multiple targets, multiple effects, complex diseases” and replaces the “magic bullets” by “magic shotguns.” Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) has been recognized as one of the most important strategies in complementary and alternative medicine. Though CHM has been practiced for a very long time, its effectiveness and beneficial contribution to public health has not been fully recognized. Also, the knowledge on the mechanisms of CHM formulas is scarce. In the present review, the concept and significance of network pharmacology is briefly introduced. The application and potential role of network pharmacology in the CHM fields is also discussed, such as data collection, target prediction, network visualization, multicomponent interaction, and network toxicology. Furthermore, the developing tendency of network pharmacology is also summarized, and its role in CHM research is discussed.

Subfields: Computational Theory and Mathematics, Molecular Biology, Pharmacology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/eb0e135dcc91b8014a595add22147397ca9932f7

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

  1. Haidan Yuan
  2. Q. Ma
  3. H. Cui
  4. Guancheng Liu
  5. Xiaoyan Zhao
  6. Wei Li
  7. Guangchun Piao

Citations in the corpus