Western-medicine-validated anti-tumor agents and traditional Chinese medicine

摘要

Because of the conceptual differences that underlie traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and modern Western medications, TCM has not been fully accepted by main-stream medicine. However, the length of TCM's existence (more than 4000 years) suggests that it could provide at least a potential source of new drugs. This speculation is partially supported by a recent Trends in Molecular Medicine article , in which the authors presented examples of TCM-derived anti-tumor drugs that have been validated by Western medicine. Noting that only well-known anti-cancer products derived from TCM were presented in that paper, we were interested to explore how many anti-cancer agents derived from TCM components have been validated by Western medicine