Lifting the Veil on Traditional Chinese Medicine

The good and the bad: Alkaloid screening and brineshrimp bioassays of aqueous extracts of 31 medicinal plants of eastern Nicaragua

“…Toxicity assays have been performed on plant extracts from the ethnomedicinal flora of several countries, including Argentina (Mongelli et al, 1996), Brazil (Quignard et al, 2004), Guatemala (Franssen et al, 1997;Cáceres et al, 1998;Michel et al, 2007), Honduras (Lentz et al, 1998), India (Padmaja et al, 2002), Jamaica (Facey et al, 1999), New Guinea (Rao, 1996), Philippine Islands (Horgen et al, 2001), Spain (Serrano, 1996), Tanzania (Moshi et al, 2004), and Turkey (Sener et al, 1998). A massive new and important project recently announced is the Herbalome Project by the Chinese government to assay for chemical constituents and toxicity the 400,000 medicinal preparations derived from 10,000 medicinal species used in Chinese traditional medicine (Stone, 2008).…”

Traditional Chinese Medicine Active Ingredient-Metal Based Anticancer Agents

“…Generally, TCM-metal based compounds formed via metal ions coordinating to TCM with O, N donors, exhibiting enhanced activity and synergistic effect with multi-targets and multi-mechanisms. With the Chinese government promotion of the modernization of TCM (Normile, 2003) and carrying out the herbalome (Stone, 2008), as well as the advancements of genome, proteome, metabolome, there is the possibility to design new TCM metal-based anticancer drugs and develop modern TCM, which will benefit to overcoming multidrug resistance (MDR). The promising trends have been supported by great potential of TCM metal-based antitumor agents mentioned above.…”

Standardization of traditional Chinese medicine and evaluation of evidence from its clinical practice

“…And the prescription emphasizes the overall condition of the individual patient and adopts a holistic approach rather than a particular course of disease or allopathic approach (19). Thus, some professionals are skeptical and critical of TCM because they think it is based on inaccurate and mysterious interpretations and experientialism rather than scientifi c evidence such as defi nite pharmacokinetic analysis, toxicity testing, and double-blinded clinical trials (22).…”