Translational medicine:promoting Chinese materia medica modernization into clinic faster and better

The vigorous advance on modernization of Chinese materia medica(CMM) has achieved great successes,which is the consensus of scholars.However,the physicians and populace have few awareness of the CMM modernization achievements.It is in great need to promote the modernization of CMM into clinic by translational medicine.The research pathway of CMM translational medicine could be summarized as a repeated cycle of bedside to bench to bedside.And,its main research might include two missions,one is the clinic-oriented standardization of CMM and the other is the clinic-derived discovery of CMM new drugs.The clinic-oriented standardization of CMM is focusing on the development of the effect-based evaluating methods and standards on CMM quality and drug property and promoting CMM integration of "species-quality-property-effect-usage",which aims at making doctors be able to comprehend and emply the CMM standards.The clinic-derived discovery of CMM new drugs diverges into two pathways: one is the development of traditional compound formula drugs based on the physicians’ experiences and evidence-based medicine;the other is the innovation of modern multi-component CMM drugs based on the clinical specimens and-omic techniques.The clinic-derived drug discovery provides an efficient approach to develop novel CMM drugs with superior efficacy and safety to traditional ones.Thus,it is reasonable to suggest that the related administrations of state should strongly support the translational research of CMM by granting scientific research projects,training specialists of translational medicine,and reforming the regularities of new drug evaluation and relative policies.