ABSTRACT
In recent years, as more and more innovative drug products are going off patent, the search for new medicines that can treat critical and/or lifethreatening diseases has become the center of attention of many major pharmaceutical companies and research organizations such as the United States (US) National Institutes of Health (NIH). This leads to the study of the potential use of promising traditional Chinese herbal medicines, especially for those intended for treating critical and/or life-threatening diseases such as cancer. In the Chinese community, most people consider traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) a Chinese herbal medicine, which was developed for treating patients with certain diseases as diagnosed by the four traditional Chinese diagnostic techniques of inspection, auscultation and olfaction, interrogation, and pulse taking and palpation (Table 1.1). Certain diseases are diagnosed based on traditional Chinese medical theory of global dynamic balance among the functions/activities of all organs of the body. Unlike (objective) evidence-based clinical research and development of a Western medicine (WM), clinical research and development of a TCM is considered experience-based with anticipated large evaluator-to-evaluator (i.e., Chinese doctor-to-Chinese doctor) variability due to subjective evaluation of the disease under study. The use of TCM in humans for treating various diseases has a history of several thousands of years, although not much convincing scientific documentation regarding clinical evidence of safety and efficacy of existing TCMs is available.
