Modern traditional Chinese medicine: Identifying, defining and usage of TCM components

TCM-based medications have been used for millennia in China and have always been "different" from current Western-based medicines in that they frequently are still mixtures of predominately plant products. From the early 20th Century, there has been a move to identify both the actual compounds in these mixes, and then over the past approximately 50years, to utilize early information for current diseases, with an example being artemisinin for treatment of malaria. Since that discovery, Western scientists, together with their Chinese counterparts, have begun to investigate how TCM compositions can be utilized to discover new agents, sometimes the actual TCM-based compound(s) but also by utilizing the pharmacophores from such preparations that have utility in human diseases. The examples in this review include artemisinin derivatives and their manifold bioactivities, indirubins and derivatives as antitumor agents, arsenicals predominately as treatment for leukemia, though extending into other cancer types. Finally, there are sections discussing the use of current computerized techniques that combine metabolomics, mass spectroscopy/HPLC, and network pharmacology with the aim of identifying the "active principles" in relevant TCM preparations and finally how high content screening can be utilized in conjunction with the other analytical techniques.