Prospective consideration on metabonomic approach to the study of holistic efficacies and involved mechanisms of traditional Chinese medicines

The establishment of holistic pharmacological efficacies evaluating methods and systems that are consistent with the intrinsic characteristics of traditional Chinese medicines is one of the most important scientific tasks for the modernization of traditional Chinese medicines. Recently, the development and incorporation of metabonomics approach to this field has proved to be a novel and powerful tool for evaluating the holistic efficacies and underlying mechanisms of traditional Chinese medicines. This review contributes a brief summary and comment on the recent progress of metabonomics approach to the study of syndrome animal models, the relationship between syndrome and its corresponding prescription, and the holistic efficacies and involved mechanisms of traditional Chinese medicines. In addition, the current limitations and future prospect of incorporating metabonomic approach into this field, including the quantitative evaluation of metabonomic results, the efficacy-based metabonomic comparison of multi-component multi-target herbal medicines with one-component one-target drugs, and the integrative pharmacokinetics and metabonomics approach to disclosing the mystery of herbal medicines, have been discussed.