title: Drug discovery enters a new era with multi-target intervention strategy.
abstract: In the past century, as medical research has become increasingly precise, it has become clear that the incidence and progression of many diseases involve multiple factors and pathologies; this is particularly true for the degenerative and metabolic diseases facing industrialized societies. At the same time, it becomes increasingly clear that single-target action drugs cannot effectively treat these diseases. Researchers are looking toward the chemical industry as well as traditional herbal medicines to find multi-target interventions. Thus, a new era in drug discovery has begun. Specifically, three approaches have proven effective in seeking multi-target drugs. These are: (1) designing drugs with multiple components; (2) discovering drugs through the study of synergistic compound-compound interactions in medicinal herbs or among chemical drugs and herbal components; and (3) developing drugs to tackle complex multi-component diseases. The authors conclude that there is an increasing need for multi-component remedies to treat the complex chronic diseases afflicting modern populations. Given this situation and the growing body of evidence that these new approaches are effective, multi-target intervention appears to have great potential for discovering, designing, and developing effective new drugs for today's diseases.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Cancer and Inflammation Research, School of Chinese Medicine, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong SAR, China.
authors.forename: Xiao-ying
authors.initials: XY
authors.lastname: Tian
authors.forename: Liang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D015195:Drug Design; D055808:Drug Discovery / Q000639:trends; D004357:Drug Synergism; D041743:Herb-Drug Interactions; D006801:Humans; D058990:Molecular Targeted Therapy / Q000639:trends; D010946:Plants, Medicinal