ABSTRACT
Chinese materia medica has a wide range of clinical applications， but it has many active ingredients with different physicochemical properties， and the target organs， action pathways and mechanisms for different ingredients to exert their efficacy are not the same. Therefore， it is difficult to design and develop a co-delivery system loading multiple components of Chinese materia medica to maximize the synergistic therapeutic efficiency. Based on the characteristics of effectiveness and functionality of active ingredients， the strategies for multi-component co-delivery of Chinese materia medica can be categorized into two types：firstly， based on the effectiveness of active ingredients， new carriers such as liposomes， nanoparticles can be constructed to load multi-components of Chinese materia medica. secondly， based on the functionality of some active ingredients of Chinese materia medica， they are employed in the construction of co-delivery system， which can give play to the dual characteristics of their own efficacy and preparation functions. In this paper， we summarized the relevant research progress of the above two types of multi-component co-delivery strategies， and mainly discussed the pharmaceutical functions of the active ingredients in co-delivery systems， in order to find a more suitable multi-component co-delivery strategy， promoting the design and development of new delivery systems of Chinese materia medica.