Advancements in screening systems for active ingredients in traditional Chinese medicines using ligand fishing technique

Natural products have been a significant source of lead compounds in modern drug discovery. Compared to traditional techniques for active ingredient screening, affinity-based ligand fishing offers decent specificity, high efficiency, simplicity of operation, and high throughput. In recent years, this technique has been developed and successfully used to screen bioactive chemicals from natural products, making it the most practical and successful method for screening specific ligands from complex matrices. The strategy of "ligand fishing" has been summarized in this paper based on recent publications. The separation principles of ligand fishing for the screening and identification of active ingredients in traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) using various analytical techniques were reviewed. In addition, based on the deficiencies of current drug discovery approaches, the future development of various new methodologies to screen for active compounds from TCMs were reviewed. These new methodologies have the potential to facilitate faster and more effective drug development.