Future perspectives of Chinese medical formulae: chinmedomics as an effector

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been used for thousands of years to treat or prevent disease. The health care paradigm has shifted from a focus on disease to TCM therapy with a holistic approach. However, the actual value of TCM has not been fully recognized worldwide due to a lack of scientific approaches to its study. Today omics has become practically available, and resembles TCM in many aspects, and can serve as a key driving force for the translation of the traditional Chinese medical formulae (chinmediformulae) into practice, and will develop and advance the concept of the metabolomics of chinmediformulae (chinmedomics). Chinmedomics seeks to elucidate the therapeutic and synergistic properties and metabolism of chinmediformulae and the involved metabolic pathways using modern analytical techniques. It is an integral part of top-down systems biology, which aims to improve understanding of chinmediformulae. This approach of combining chinmedomics with chinmediformulae with modern health care systems may lead to a revolution in TCM therapy. Although the scientific study of chinmedomics is at an early stage and requires further scrutiny and validation, the approach has major implications to improve the efficacy of chinmediformulae. This article introduces and reviews the concept of chinmedomics, and highlights recent examples of the approach, which are presented for description and discussion.