Network pharmacology: An emerging tool for natural product drug discovery and evidence-based Ayurveda

Abstract

Natural products from traditional medicine like Ayurveda are considered as attractive options in new drug discovery.Traditional poly herbal formulations contain many bioactives and are capable of modulating several disease targets.Studying complex relationships between the bioactives, targets, diseases and genes is now possible with help of emerging technique known as network pharmacology.This article briefly explains present status of drug research and highlights importance of network pharmacology as a new tool for drug and formulation discovery.Already, network pharmacology has been successfully used to study traditional Chinese medicines.With help of Ayurvedic formulation Triphala, this article demonstrates how pharmacology networks of medicinal plants and their formulations can be constructed and used to understand putative actions, indications and mechanisms.The emerging technique of network pharmacology can serve as a valuable tool for scientific understanding of Ayurveda and natural product drug discovery.