A critical assessment of Traditional Chinese Medicine databases as a source for drug discovery.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been used for thousands of years to treat human diseases. Recently, many databases have been devoted to studying TCM pharmacology. Most of these databases include information about the active ingredients of TCM herbs and their disease indications. These databases enable researchers to interrogate the mechanisms of action of TCM systematically. However, there is a need for comparative studies of these databases, as they are derived from various resources with different data processing methods. In this review, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the existing TCM databases. We found that the information complements each other by comparing herbs, ingredients, and herb-ingredient pairs in these databases. Therefore, data harmonization is vital to use all the available information fully. Moreover, different TCM databases may contain various annotation types for herbs or ingredients, notably for the chemical structure of ingredients, making it challenging to integrate data from them. We also highlight the latest TCM databases on symptoms or gene expressions, suggesting that using multi-omics data and advanced bioinformatics approaches may provide new insights for drug discovery in TCM. In summary, such a comparative study would help improve the understanding of data complexity that may ultimately motivate more efficient and more standardized strategies towards the digitalization of TCM.

Toxic Assessment of Triclosan and Triclocarban on Artemia salina.

In this study, we investigated the possible acute toxic and genotoxic effects of triclosan (TCS) and triclocarban (TCC) on Artemia salina. Genotoxicity was evaluated using single-cell gel electrophoresis and apoptotic frequency assays (Annexin V-FITC/PI assay). Acute toxicity test results showed that TCC (LC50-24 h = 17.8 µg/L) was more toxic than TCS (LC50-24 h = 171.1 µg/L). Significant increases in both genotoxic biomarkers were observed at 24 h after initial exposure, indicating that these two chemicals are potentially dangerous for this aquatic biological model. Although further studies are required, a comparison of data both in vitro and in vivo allowed us to suggest possible mechanisms of action for TCS and TCC in this sentinel organism.