title: Systems Pharmacology in Small Molecular Drug Discovery.
abstract: Drug discovery is a risky, costly and time-consuming process depending on multidisciplinary methods to create safe and effective medicines. Although considerable progress has been made by high-throughput screening methods in drug design, the cost of developing contemporary approved drugs did not match that in the past decade. The major reason is the late-stage clinical failures in Phases II and III because of the complicated interactions between drug-specific, human body and environmental aspects affecting the safety and efficacy of a drug. There is a growing hope that systems-level consideration may provide a new perspective to overcome such current difficulties of drug discovery and development. The systems pharmacology method emerged as a holistic approach and has attracted more and more attention recently. The applications of systems pharmacology not only provide the pharmacodynamic evaluation and target identification of drug molecules, but also give a systems-level of understanding the interaction mechanism between drugs and complex disease. Therefore, the present review is an attempt to introduce how holistic systems pharmacology that integrated in silico ADME/T (i.e., absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion and toxicity), target fishing and network pharmacology facilitates the discovery of small molecular drugs at the system level.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Advancing Translational Medicine in Bone &amp; Joint Diseases, School of Chinese Medicine, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China. z_wei1005@126.com.|Institute of Integrated Bioinformedicine &amp; Translational Science, School of Chinese Medicine, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China. z_wei1005@126.com.|Department of Scientific Research Management, Shanghai Guanghua Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, Shanghai 200052, China. z_wei1005@126.com.|Institute of Basic Research in Clinical Medicine, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing 100700, China. z_wei1005@126.com.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Center of Bioinformatics, Northwest A&amp;F University, Yangling 712100, Shanxi, China. yh_wang@nwsuaf.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Yonghua
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Institute for Advancing Translational Medicine in Bone &amp; Joint Diseases, School of Chinese Medicine, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China. aipinglu@hkbu.edu.hk.|Institute of Integrated Bioinformedicine &amp; Translational Science, School of Chinese Medicine, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China. aipinglu@hkbu.edu.hk.|Department of Scientific Research Management, Shanghai Guanghua Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, Shanghai 200052, China. aipinglu@hkbu.edu.hk.|Institute of Basic Research in Clinical Medicine, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing 100700, China. aipinglu@hkbu.edu.hk.
authors.forename: Aiping
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: Institute for Advancing Translational Medicine in Bone &amp; Joint Diseases, School of Chinese Medicine, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China. zhangge@hkbu.edu.hk.|Institute of Integrated Bioinformedicine &amp; Translational Science, School of Chinese Medicine, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China. zhangge@hkbu.edu.hk.|Department of Scientific Research Management, Shanghai Guanghua Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine, Shanghai 200052, China. zhangge@hkbu.edu.hk.|Institute of Basic Research in Clinical Medicine, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing 100700, China. zhangge@hkbu.edu.hk.
authors.forename: Ge
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods; D003198:Computer Simulation; D015195:Drug Design; D055808:Drug Discovery / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D008024:Ligands; D058990:Molecular Targeted Therapy; D016571:Neural Networks, Computer; D010600:Pharmacology / Q000379:methods; D010641:Phenotype; D021281:Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship; D054852:Small Molecule Libraries; D049490:Systems Biology / Q000379:methods
chemical_list: D008024:Ligands; D054852:Small Molecule Libraries
keywords: ADME/T; drug discovery; network pharmacology; systems pharmacology