Research ideas on Tongmai Yangxin Prescription in treatment of coronary artery disease based on network pharmacology / 中草药

ABSTRACT

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a complex, multifactorial, chronic disease and one of the most dangerous diseases to human health due to its high mortality. The single target drug therapy is widely used in the treatment of CAD, but it could not meet the demand of today's treatment of complex disease. However, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has a good effect in treating complex disease. Tongmai Yangxin Prescription, based on "Zhigancao Decoction", is used to cure cardiovascular disease. The formulae is developed by Professor Ruan Shi-yi who won the title of "Guo Yi Da Shi (master of national medicine)". The studies on the single herb which consists in Tongmai Yangxin Prescription, such as Rehmanniae Radix and Glycyrrhizae Radix, have been made considerable progress. But systematic research of Tongmai Yangxin Prescription is still unavailable. There is a certain risk when we use Tongmai Yangxin Prescription in clinic, as the molecular basis of the formulae is unclear. The approach of network pharmacology is to set up a model of the compound action of Tongmai Yangxin Prescription. Meanwhile the model is based on the experimental data from single herb or active ingredients. Then, drug-target network, CAD-pathway network, and CAD-symptom network could be built to explain the functional mechanism through the method of literature mining and data mining, combining the theory of TCM.