title: Fangjiomics: in search of effective and safe combination therapies.
abstract: Millennia-old Chinese medicine treats disease with many combination therapies involving ingredients used in clinic practice. Fangjiomics is the science of identifying and designing effective mixtures of bioactive agents and elucidating their modes of action beyond those of Chinese patent medicines. Omics profiling and quantitative optimal modeling have been used to associate the various responses with biological pathways related to disease phenotype. Fangjiomics seeks to study myriad compatible combinations that may act through multiple targets, modes of action, and biological pathways balancing on off-target and on-target effects. This approach may lead to the discovery of controllable array-designed therapies to combine less potent elements that are more effective collectively but have fewer adverse side effects than does any element singly.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Basic Research in Clinical Medicine, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing, China. zhonw@vip.sina.com
authors.forename: Zhong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Yiyu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: Yongyan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D015195:Drug Design; D055808:Drug Discovery; D004357:Drug Synergism; D004359:Drug Therapy, Combination / Q000009:adverse effects; D020834:Ethnopharmacology / Q000379:methods*; D006694:Holistic Health; D006801:Humans; D008516:Medicine, Chinese Traditional / Q000009:adverse effects; D055432:Metabolomics / Q000379:methods*; D058990:Molecular Targeted Therapy; D010946:Plants, Medicinal / Q000737:chemistry