A group of Chinese and U.S. scientists have developed a tool for predicting the effectiveness of herbs used in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). About the tool: The new tool is a “network medicine framework” that predicts the effectiveness of the herbs in treating specific disease symptoms. According to the researchers, it reveals the scientific foundation of TCM and “establishes a paradigm for understanding the molecular basis of natural medicine and predicting disease treatments.”
They mapped gene-symptom associations onto a model that detailed interactions between proteins and incorporated data on proteins targeted by 1,200 herbs