Traditional Chinese Medicine-Based Network Pharmacology Could Lead to New Multicompound Drug Discovery

Figure 2

A conceptual model for multipl compound drug discovery using TCM-based network pharmacology. In the left of the paradigm, the molecular network of the disease-TCM pattern (lower left) can be constructed by analyzing the omics data from patients classified with the TCM pattern or related information from public databases. The typical and major TCM patterns (indicated as A, B, and C in the middle left) can be determined based on an expert consensus or literature analysis. In the right of the diagram, the most commonly used TCM herbal combinations for the treatment of a disease with specific TCM patterns can be found using text mining based on publications from SinoMed database (indicated as A, B, and C, middle right). All of the targeted proteins for the active compounds in the TCM herbal formula can be obtained in PubChem, and these targeted proteins can be used to build up the pharmacological networks for potential multiple-compound drug candidates from the herbal formulas (lower right). By matching the pharmacological networks of herbal compound combinations from the herbal formula with the disease-pattern molecular network, those well-matched compound combinations might be found for new drug candidates (capsule 1, 2, and 3 in lower part).