Integrating System Biology Tools to Decipher the Mechanisms of Action of Herbal Medicine

The advance of bioinformatics tools aims at unraveling the molecular mechanisms of herbal medicine and contributing to better health treatments for human conditions. The science and practice of herbal medicine is emerging around the world to develop better compounds used for drug design, but mainly to better understand the mechanistic design of herb formulas used in the long history for treating various medical purposes. The research race of developing an ideal systematic approach would gain much popularity and confidence among health professionals that can recommend these products to their patients. The challenge resides in deciphering what approach and parameters to use for clearly demonstrating the efficient role of herbal formulas. In the past 5-10 years ago, researchers attempted investigating the influence of herbal formula on gene expression profiling which let other groups develop larger sets of transcriptomes and predictive interactions. Examining changes in metabolites is valuable as it provides relevant information associated with clinical observations. To demonstrate the therapeutic effects of herbal formulas, researchers developed in silico models to provide predictive pharmacological data that can validate the in vitro and in vivo studies.