The chemistry of Chinese drugs

Some herbal drugs commonly used in Chinese medicine have been studied chemically in correlation with their biological activities. In many cases it has been recognized that some characteristic chemical constituents could represent the therapeutical actions of the drugs. It is noted that elucidation of their chemical structures in view of the structure-activity relationship provides scientific evidence for the beneficial uses of traditional drugs in health care and, furthermore, promotes the discovering of new therapeutics from them. The principles of Chinese drugs are distributed widely among almost all the chemical groups of natural products, for example, simple phenolics, lignan, flavonoid, quinonoid, lower terpenes, triterpenoid, steroid, true alkaloid, protoalkaloid or amines and simple and polymolecular carbohydrates. In the present article, the chemical principles of some important Chinese drugs currently used are discussed mainly on the basis of our own investigations, and we refer to other works for a general understanding of the present status on the chemical approach to studies of Chinese drugs and medicine.