Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Review Article | OPEN ACCESS

Current application of metabolomics in the elucidation of processing mechanisms used in Chinese materia medica: A review

Ting Huang¹, Yunbin Jiang², Yanfei Zhang³, Yutian Lei¹, Guihua Jiang¹

¹College of Pharmacy, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu 611137; ²College of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Chinese Medicine, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715; ³Institute of Tibetan medicine, Tibetan Traditional Medical College, Lhasa 850000, China.

For correspondence:- Guihua Jiang Email: 11469413@qq.com Tel:+8618980923782

Accepted: 18 May 2020 Published: 30 June 2020

Citation: Huang T, Jiang Y, Zhang Y, Lei Y, Jiang G. Current application of metabolomics in the elucidation of processing mechanisms used in Chinese materia medica: A review. Trop J Pharm Res 2020; 19(6):1321-1327 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v19i6.29

© 2020 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Processing, a key characteristic of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), enhances the efficacy and safety of Chinese materia medica (CMM) in clinics. It plays an important role in TCM. Studies on processing mechanisms involved in CMM promote the development of TCM. However, most studies on the mechanisms used for processing CMM do not reflect the holistic theory of TCM because they are based only on analysis of some specific chemical components and biochemical indices which do not support the TCM characteristics of network target and multicomponent therapeutics. Fortunately, the perspective of systems biology is consistent with the holistic theory of TCM. Metabolomics, a key tool in systems biology, has been widely used to investigate the processing mechanism of CMM for many years. In this work, current applications of metabolomics in elucidating mechanisms used for processing of CMM were systematically reviewed and discussed in terms of changes in chemical components, toxicity and efficacy of CMM before and after processing. This work provides researchers a clear and concise reference on the current application of metabolomics in investigation of mechanisms used in processing of CMM. Moreover, this work provides a guide on how to investigate the mechanisms used in processing of CMM, based on metabolomics.

Keywords: Chinese materia medica, Processing mechanism, Metabolomics, Holistic theory