ArticleBriefings in bioinformatics2021
Network-based modeling of herb combinations in traditional Chinese medicine.
Article in Briefings in bioinformatics, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 70 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
70 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Pooled it
- A critical assessment of Traditional Chinese Medicine databases as a source for drug discovery.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2024Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Mechanisms of pruritus and advances in traditional Chinese medicine therapy (Review).Molecular medicine reports · 2026Review
- Decoding shared pathogenic networks of oxidative stress in neuropsychiatric disorders to prioritize multi-target therapeutics from natural products.Cell biology and toxicology · 2026Article
- A triaxial benchmark for assessing responses from large language models in traditional Chinese medicine.Communications medicine · 2026Article
- Clarifying the active ingredients & pharmacological mechanisms of traditional Chinese medicines via modern pharmaceutical analysis techniques.Journal of pharmaceutical analysis · 2026Review
- Exploring the underlying mechanisms of Hedyotis diffusa and Scutellaria Barbata herb pair on the prognosis and treatment efficacy of bladder cancer patients: an integrated approach of network pharmacology and bioinformatics analysis.BMC complementary medicine and therapies · 2026Article
- Advancing the modernization of traditional Chinese medicine through artificial intelligence and multimodal data integration.Chinese medicine · 2026Review
- Validation of the Mechanism of Action of Jiedu Shengji Oil in the Treatment of Radiation Dermatitis based on Network Pharmacology andCurrent computer-aided drug design · 2026Article
- Network pharmacological prediction on metabolites of dominant endophytic strains fromFrontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Analysis of the Genetic Comorbid Mechanisms of Type 2 Diabetes, Alzheimer's Disease, and Hypertension Using Network Modularization.BioMed research international · 2026Article
- From "Monarch, Minister, Assistant, and Envoy" to "Microbial Dialogue": A Review of Novel Mechanisms by Which Chinese Herb Pairs Improve Metabolic Diseases Through Gut Microbiota Metabolic Regulation.Gastroenterology research and practice · 2026Review
- Fermented Chinese Herbs Improved Egg Production, Egg Shell Quality, and Egg Yolk Cholesterol of Laying Hens by Regulating Estrogen, Lipid Metabolism, and Calcium Metabolism.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Multi-level association rule mining and network pharmacology to identify the polypharmacological effects of herbal materials and compounds in traditional medicine.Briefings in bioinformatics · 2025Article
- Prioritizing pathway signature using deep learning approach: a novel strategy for traditional Chinese medicine formula generation and optimization.Briefings in bioinformatics · 2025Article
- Mass spectrometry-based metabolomic as a powerful tool to unravel the component and mechanism in TCM.Chinese medicine · 2025Review
- Decoding herbal combination models through systematic strategies: insights from target information and traditional Chinese medicine clinical theory.Briefings in bioinformatics · 2025Article
- Modular-Based Synergetic Mechanisms of Jasminoidin and Ursodeoxycholic Acid in Cerebral Ischemia Therapy.Biomedicines · 2025Article
- LLMs and AI Life Models for Traditional Chinese Medicine-derived Geroprotector Formulation.Aging and disease · 2025Article
10 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been practiced for thousands of years for treating human diseases. In comparison to modern medicine, one of the advantages of TCM is the principle of herb compatibility, known as TCM formulae. A TCM formula usually consists of multiple herbs to achieve the maximum treatment effects, where their interactions are believed to elicit the therapeutic effects. Despite being a fundamental component of TCM, the rationale of combining specific herb combinations remains unclear. In this study, we proposed a network-based method to quantify the interactions in herb pairs. We constructed a protein-protein interaction network for a given herb pair by retrieving the associated ingredients and protein targets, and determined multiple network-based distances including the closest, shortest, center, kernel, and separation, both at the ingredient and at the target levels. We found that the frequently used herb pairs tend to have shorter distances compared to random herb pairs, suggesting that a therapeutic herb pair is more likely to affect neighboring proteins in the human interactome. Furthermore, we found that the center distance determined at the ingredient level improves the discrimination of top-frequent herb pairs from random herb pairs, suggesting the rationale of considering the topologically important ingredients for inferring the mechanisms of action of TCM. Taken together, we have provided a network pharmacology framework to quantify the degree of herb interactions, which shall help explore the space of herb combinations more effectively to identify the synergistic compound interactions based on network topology.
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