ABSTRACT
Traditional Chinese medicine（TCM） has the characteristics of multiple ingredients, multiple targets, and complex action pathways. Under the guidance of the holistic view and syndrome differentiation treatment, TCM and its compound have great advantages in the treatment of diseases, and its material basis and molecular mechanism of action is not clear, so there are great challenges in the research of TCM. Network pharmacology has become a new research method and technical means for the modernization of TCM. It is a research discipline derived from the study of the mechanism of TCM treatment of diseases with multi-component drugs and multiple targets under the guidance of system biology theory. It conforms to the systematic and holistic thinking mode of Chinese medicine. At present, there have been many researches on the application of Internet pharmacology in Chinese medicine, including the research on the basis and mechanism of the Chinese medicine single drug, drug pair and compound pharmacodynamics, the methods and applications of Internet pharmacology for Chinese medicine research application of combining pharmacology with other technologies. However, the rapid data update, the emergence of new databases, the types of algorithms and the use of tools have made the development of network pharmacology too fast. People have neglected to update the databases, tools and algorithms and compare the advantages of each database. This article summarizes and compares the database, tools and algorithms of the network pharmacology in the past three years, and describes the network through the substance basis of TCM, the pharmacological mechanism of TCM, the development of new drugs, the quality control of TCM, and the formulating rules of TCM. The application and problems of pharmacology in the field of TCM are expected to provide a reference for the research and application of network pharmacology in TCM.