ABSTRACT
Sanqi in Chinese herbal medicine is the root and rhi-zoma of Panax notoginseng (Burk.)F.H.Chen. As the effects of strengthening with tonics, promoting blood circulation to re-move blood stasis,relieving swelling and pain and hemostasia,it is widely used as a tonic medicine in the traditional Chinese medicine. The main active constituents of Sanqi are panax noto-ginseng saponins,including ginsenoside Rg1,Rb1 and notogin-senoside R1. Notoginsenoside R1 is one of the unique monomer compositions of panax notoginseng,which is often used as an in-gredient indicator in new drug research and development.In cur-rent years, the scientists have been conducted tremendous fun-damental studies to research the pharmacological activities of no-toginsenoside R1, to reveal its protective effects on the cardio-vascular system,central nervous system as well as to many other aspects. It is hoped that the relevant study about the pharmaco-logical action of notoginsenoside R1 would help its further clini-cal application. This paper mainly reviews the research on the pharmacological mechanism of notoginsenoside R1 in recent years.