Drug discovery from Chinese Medicines: opportunity and challenge

Abstract

Chinese medicine has been used as a main stream medical system in China for centuries and it still is used in many other countries as a complementary and alternative medicine. To understand Chinese medicine in scientific basis, bioscience and OMICS technologies are powerful approach in Chinese medicine research. In the past years, drug or drug candidates from Chinese medicines have been acknowledged by worldwide, such as artemisinin and arsenic trioxide. Actually, as a drug discovery resource and complementary and alternative medicine, Chinese medicine rarely uses single pure compound or single herb, instead, it always uses blend of several herbs (composite formulae) to treat diseases. Facing complicated diseases, Western medicine have been also using combination therapy for cancer etc. in modern medical practice. Identification of natural origin, quality control, gut bacteria metabolite, pharmacological effects, molecular targets and clinical trial carry out in international platform should be emphasized. Our studies will be used to illustrate this approach on study of anticancer Chinese medicines in this topic. The study was financially supported by grants from the RGC GRF, Hong Kong SAR of China (Project code: 766211) and Gala family trust for natural products (Project code: 200007008).