Editorial: Network Pharmacology and Traditional Medicine
Xinxing Lai, Xin Wang, Hu Y, Shi-Bing Su, Wenqing Li, Shao Li
Abstract
With the gradual rise of interdisciplinary subjects such as computational biology, bioinformatics, artificial intelligence, and big data science, researchers have shifted research on traditional medicine from a single and isolated mode to a multi-faceted and systematic research mode. One of the significant changes is understanding the mechanisms of drug action from the perspective of the biomolecular network. Using the "network" to regain the "whole" has brought significant changes and new challenges to medical research. Traditional medicine (TM), characterized by holistic, personalized, and multicomponent therapy, holds great potential to address a number of challenges in modern health care. By generating an unprecedented opportunity for the systematic research of TM, network pharmacology is evolving as a systematic paradigm and becoming a frontier research field of drug discovery and development. From a systematic perspective, it lays emphasis on revealing the systematic pharmacological mechanisms of drugs and further guiding the drug discovery and development, as well as clinical treatment. Network pharmacology integrates computational, experimental, and clinical investigation and creates favorable conditions for exploring the characteristics of TM and further linking to the frontiers of modern science and technology.