Progress and perspectives of biomarker discovery in Chinese medicine research

Biomarker discovery in Chinese medicine (CM) has recently attracted a great deal of attention, owing to the promise of high-throughput technologies development and the potential of Chinese herbal medicine. Furthermore, it seems that pattern classification in CM might be serving as inspirational analogy and a practical guide, which might contribute to biomarkers discovery rather than just being used as diagnostic method. Although much work is still needed to identify markers, efforts are now being directed towards discovering biomarkers or biomarkers based network that could target herbal formulae. In this article, we review progress in biomarker discovery development, discuss current biomarker discovery in CM highlighting challenges and opportunities of pattern classification and presenting a perspective of the future integrative modeling approaches as an emerging trend in biomarker discovery.