Biotransformation of Chinese Herbs and Their Ingredients

A key task for the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) modernization is to interpret the scientific connotation of TCM through the development of new theories and modern techniques. Chemical proteomics is a powerful mass spectrometry-based affinity chromatography approach for identifying proteome-wide small molecule–protein interactions. Chemical proteomics is used to study and detect proteomes with specific chemical molecules that interact with target proteins. Here, we review the main techniques of chemical proteomics and their applications in the research of active ingredients, target proteins and synergistic mechanisms and in drug discoveries of TCM. Chemical proteomics study provides new ideas for the TCM modernization, which may help to reveal the essential principles of TCM at the molecular level, and thus facilitates the new drug discovery of TCM and the inheritance and development of TCM theories.