Shifted Research Approach for New Drug Discovery

Systems biology and the Herbalome Project have good prospects if the specific episteme-method approach of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is taken into serious consideration. TCM takes advantage of a specific holistic method, which is based on the episteme method approach derived from the conceptions of unceasing movement and dynamic holism, to handle the diagnosis and treatments of certain diseases. Although the episteme method approach of TCM is quite different from that of modern medicine, some recent investigations have in principle clarified the episteme method characters of TCM. By means of high-tech purification methods, additional drugs than only artemisinin (qing hao-su) from TCM can be expected in the near future.