Systems Pharmacology Applied In Drug Discovery And Therapeutic Insight Into Herbs

Systems pharmacology describes an emerging field that integrates systems biology and network pharmacology to advance drug discovery and understand the treatment mechanisms. The aim of the this work is to focus on the role that the systems pharmacology plays across the traditional herbal medicines discipline, which is demonstrated by two case studies of herbal active compounds applied in the treatment of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and depression. Firstly, on basis of critically review the application of clinical pharmacology, an across-the-board statistical analysis was developed to estimate the effectiveness of herbs in traditional medicines. Secondly, we explored the active compounds and their targets by carrying out a systematic absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion (ADME) screening and large-scale target fishing. Thirdly, the network pharmacology methods are applied to construct the drug-target, target-target, target-pathway and drug-disease networks, which were used to understand how drugs work on the specific targets and pathways. Finally, systems pharmacology method combined herbal medicine and omics datasets can allow for understating of traditional and current knowledge of herbal medicines and, notably, for the application to new drug discovery for complex diseases.