Comparative Study of Characteristics of Network Pharmacology Databases Used in Korean Medicine : Mainly with Representative Scenarios

Network pharmacology is a research field based on system biology by combining computational analysis with molecular biological experiments to discover drug targets and molecular biological mechanisms. Therefore, a variety of Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM) databases and tools are developed and used in Korean medicine research study. In this review, we conducted a comparative study of characteristics of TCM databases, focusing on several representative network pharmacology scenarios. We selected 10 TCM related databases from Database Commons and Pubmed based on their publication year and citation numbers. We analyzed source of data, characteristics, service components such as analytical functions of them. Also, we introduced several representative scenarios for exploring the efficacy of herb or herbal formula based on papers related to system biology. Our findings suggest that researchers can use network pharmacology based scenarios to explore the therapeutic mechanisms and targets between disease and herb or herbal formula. In conclusion, this review aims to provide researchers with ideas for selecting appropriate databases for Korean medicine research.