In-Silico Studies in Herbal Drugs: A Review

The 2018 review article discussed the role of in-silico studies, which are computational methods, in herbal drug research. These methods help in analyzing large data sets to model disease pathways and identify drug targets without extensive experiments. The review emphasized the use of techniques like XRD, XRF, and ICP-MS for analyzing the structure and estimating metals and minerals in compound drugs. In-silico studies have been particularly useful in Chinese medicine for identifying targets for a wide range of conditions, including alopecia. The review concluded that bioinformatics could help in designing new drug combinations and reduce the time, resources, and need for initial clinical trials in the development of herbal formulations, thereby improving drug standardization, safety, and efficacy.