Insights and Practice in the Development of Naturally-derived Multi-target Combination Drugs

Natural medicines，embodying millennia of clinical practice，represent one of the key strategic resources for addressing major health challenges. Natural product-derived therapeutics，particularly Traditional Chinese Medicine formulas，exhibit distinct advantages in the prevention and treatment of chronic complex diseases owing to their multi-component，multi-target，and multi-process regulatory features，and thus hold substantial promise for establishing new therapeutic systems for chronic complex diseases. Leveraging China’s abundant natural medicinal resources，the systematic development of a theoretical and technological framework with indigenous characteristics is of major strategic importance for the future of the national biopharmaceutical industry. In this context，this article focuses on the development of natural product-derived multi-target combination drugs and discusses their principal characteristics，mechanistic basis，integrative effects，and development pathways. The aim is to build an independent innovation system rooted in China’s natural medicinal resources and the strengths of Traditional Chinese Medicine，thereby providing insights and references for transforming and advancing new drug discovery paradigms.