Application of proteomics to determine the mechanism of action of traditional Chinese medicine remedies

Ethnopharmacological relevance: The rationale for using traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is based on the experience that has been gained from its wide use over thousands of years. However, the mechanisms of action of many TCM are still unclear. Proteomics, which mainly characterizes protein functions, protein-protein interactions, and protein modification in tissues or animals, can be used to investigate signaling pathway perturbations in cells or the whole body. Proteomics has improved the discovery process of effective TCM compounds, and has helped to elucidate their possible mechanisms of action. Therefore, a systematic review of the application of proteomics on TCM research is of great importance and necessity. This review strives to describe the literature on the application of proteomics to elucidate the mechanism of action of TCM on various diseases, and provide the essential discussion on the further utilization of proteomics data to accelerate TCM research.

Materials and methods: Literature survey was performed via electronic search on Pubmed with keywords 'Proteomics' and 'Traditional Chinese Medicine'. The papers written in English were acquired and analyzed in this review.

Results: This review mainly summarizes the application of proteomics to investigate TCM remedies for neuronal disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and immunology-related disease.

Conclusions: Researchers have applied proteomics to study the mechanism of action of TCM and made substantial progresses. Further studies are required to determine the protein targets of the active compounds, analyze the mechanism of actions in patients, compare the clinical effects with western medicine.