Editorial: Network pharmacology and traditional medicine: Setting the new standards by combining In silico and experimental work
Xin Wang, Hu Y, Xuezhong Zhou, Shao Li
Abstract
Editorial on the Research Topic Network pharmacology and traditional medicine: setting the new standards by combining In silico and experimental work Network pharmacology: A breakthrough point for traditional medicine research in the era of biomedical big data and artificial intelligence With the rise of the interdisciplinary Frontier such as system medicine and bioinformatics, a new generation of pharmaceutical research paradigm characterized by network and system has attracted more and more attention in the era of biomedical big data and artificial intelligence. Network pharmacology is a Frontier research field that systematically illustrates mechanisms of drugs and guides the research and development of drugs into clinical diagnosis and treatment. It is an original interdisciplinary subject of pharmacology, system biology, bioinformatics, network science, and other related disciplines. Network pharmacology emphasizes the overall perspective of the biological networks by analyzing the molecular association between drugs and their treatment objects. Traditional medicine (TM) has accumulated ample treatments from long-term clinical practice. It is worth noting that TM is characterized by holistic, personalized, multi-component, multi-target and multi-pathway therapy. To systematically reveal the biological basis of the overall diagnosis and treatment of TM, a key concept derived from the multi-target nature of traditional medicine has been proposed, termed as "network target", shifting away from the current "single target" research paradigm (