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.
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Tian, Xy., Liu, L. Drug discovery enters a new era with multi-target intervention strategy. Chin. J. Integr. Med. 18, 539–542 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11655-011-0900-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11655-011-0900-2