Concept design of computer-aided study on traditional Chinese drugs

Traditional Chinese drugs (TCDs) have played a key role for Chinese people in the treatment of diseases since ancient times. The use of TCDs has gener ated a great amount of information in the past thousand years about the rel ationship between natural products and the human body. However, up to now, our understanding on the mode of action of the TCD is still limited. Consid ering that the basic mechanism of all drug function involves the interactio n between the drug and biological receptors at the molecular level, we prop ose to connect TCDs with modern medicine theory through molecular structure s. We propose to explain functions of TCDs by using the knowledge developed in modern molecular biology, pharmacology, computer chemistry, and biochem istry. We are working on a computer-aided Chinese drug study that is discus sed in this paper. A short introduction on the progress of our research is also given.