Thoughts and exploration on pharmacokinetic study of herbal medicines based on metabonomics and complex network

The change of drug development pattern pushes the innovation of drug valuation methods.  The pharmacokinetic research of traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) is an important part of TCM modernization and plays a key role in novel drug development of TCM.  However, the research methods and techniques are in consistent with the specific characteristics of TCM, i.e., multiple-components is still in the infant.  This review makes a brief summary of current pharmacokinetic exploration of TCM, metabonomics and complex network, and puts forward a new strategy based on complex network and metabonomics to study TCM pharmacokinetic in order to disclose the active components and mechanism of TCM.