Overview of network pharmacology in traditional medicinal material research

Abstract

Traditional medicinal material (TMM) has a history spanning thousands of years and plays an important role in disease treatment. However, comprehensively understanding the mechanism of TMM remains a persistent challenge for researchers due to its multi-compound and multi-action features. Network pharmacology, a discipline rooted in bioinformatics technology and modern pharmacology, has facilitated a shift from the "one drug - one target" model to a "multi-drug - multi-target" model, that offers a solution to elucidate the multi - action mechanism of TMMs. This review article introduced concepts, methodologies, databases, and applications of network pharmacology in TMM research. Network pharmacology represents a novel approach to systematically explore the mechanism of action of TMM by elucidating the interaction network between herbal target proteins and disease genes. Simultaneously, it aids in elucidating Traditional Medicine concepts from a systematically biological perspective. While research and literature on network pharmacology have garnered increasing global attention, locating similar documents in Vietnamese poses a challenge. As one of the pioneering overview documents in Vietnamese on this subject, we aim to introduce the network pharmacology method to domestic readers and colleagues, fostering the advancement of a novel research direction in unraveling the mechanism and essence of TMM in treating various diseases.