Modern research routes to new medicines from Chinese Materia Medica

Abstract

Chinese Materia Medica (CMM), in eluding herbal and traditional medicines, has been used for centuries by Asian peoples to treat disease and main tam health. CMM has also played an important role as the basis of numerous new leads for modern ”single-component” drug discovery and development. How ever, modern scientific technology should be applied not only to the discovery of single bioactive lead com pounds, but also to the development of active fractions and effective and safe herbal prescriptions as new medicines and high quality dietary supplements. This review will discuss modern research routes to wards the discovery and development of bioactive natural products and their analogs as new medicines, with emphasis on those single pure com pounds developed in the author's laboratory as anticancer and anti-AIDS clinical trials candidates. In addition, this brief re view will also discuss the quality control methods for the production of standardized new medicines, as well as the introduction of modern research technologies, such as proteomics, for the generation of new medicines from CMM in the post genomic era.