TCMID 2.0: a comprehensive resource for TCM

TLDR

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a longstanding medical practice in Asia and a growing complementary therapy in the West, attracting global attention in life sciences. TCMID was launched in 2013 as a comprehensive database to modernize and standardize TCM. TCMID 2.0 expands the original database to 18,203 ingredients, 15 prescriptions, 82 targets, 1,356 drugs, 842 diseases, adds prescription‑ingredient data, and incorporates 778 herbal MS spectra for 170 herbs and 3,895 spectra for 729 ingredients to document quality variation and aid component identification. The expanded resource has been well received by pharmacologists and scholars, and its enriched data set is expected to accelerate TCM modernization and deepen understanding of its diverse pharmacologic mechanisms.

Abstract

As a traditional medical intervention in Asia and a complementary and alternative medicine in western countries, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is capturing worldwide attention in life science field. Traditional Chinese Medicine Integrated Database (TCMID), which was originally launched in 2013, was a comprehensive database aiming at TCM's modernization and standardization. It has been highly recognized among pharmacologists and scholars in TCM researches. The latest release, TCMID 2.0 (http://www.megabionet.org/tcmid/), replenished the preceding database with 18 203 herbal ingredients, 15 prescriptions, 82 related targets, 1356 drugs, 842 diseases and numerous new connections between them. Considering that chemical changes might take place in decocting process of prescriptions, which may result in new ingredients, new data containing the prescription ingredients was collected in current version. In addition, 778 herbal mass spectrometry (MS) spectra related to 170 herbs were appended to show the variation of herbal quality in different origin and distinguish genuine medicinal materials from common ones while 3895 MS spectra of 729 ingredients were added as the supplementary materials of component identification. With the significant increase of data, TCMID 2.0 will further facilitate TCM's modernization and enhance the exploration of underlying biological processes that are response to the diverse pharmacologic actions of TCM.