This Research Topic is part of a series. See also Volume I:
Metabolomics and Metabolism of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Experimental evidence from pharmacological studies shows that traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) could be beneficial for the treatment of various diseases. However, the complexities present in diagnostic theory, chemical composition of Chinese medicinal plants, and therapeutic philosophy, are currently an obstacle for the progression of TCM for novel-drug discovery. These complexities include unclear bioactive compounds, mechanisms of action, undetermined targets for therapy, non-specific features for drug metabolism and toxicology, etc.
To overcome those issues, metabolomics is a potentially useful tool for future improvement and understanding of TCM from the small-molecule metabolism level. This level of resolution will contribute to rigorous hypothesis testing in terms of the effects, or lack thereof, of well-established compounds of pharmacological relevance within the TCM frame of reference, thereby optimizing treatments. In terms of TCM therapeutics, this will mostly involve the complex interactions and metabolism between small-molecules in vivo (the hosts) and small-molecules in vitro (TCM-associated compounds). It has the potential to surmount the scientific challenges currently surrounding TCM from both a general, and specifically a metabolic perspective and promote a new horizon in drug discovery.
Essentially, metabolomics is a systems biology-driven interdisciplinary approach, whose applicability requires the integrative involvement of the knowledge and techniques used in such varied fields as: chemistry, biochemistry, instrumental science, pharmaceutical sciences, pharmacology, drug metabolism, bioinformatics, etc. This collaboration provides a means to both integrate TCM with a broader audience and expose TCM to more thorough analysis, further promoting an evidence-based approach to TCM treatment.
In this Research Topic, we aim to collect high-quality reviews and research articles which take advantage of the potential for rigorous hypothesis testing that the metabolomics paradigm affords new studies in TCM, to highlight the value of metabolomics and metabolism in addressing the complexity of TCM in systems pharmacology and enhancing their biomedical value in a real world of biomedicine, shedding light on the aid that metabolomics can offer to the investigation of complex herbal extracts and, specifically, to link phytochemical analysis with the assessment of a potential pharmacological effect and therapeutic potential.
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All the manuscripts submitted to the collection will need to fully comply with the
Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology (you can freely download the full version
here).