Toxicogenomics for the Prediction of Toxicity Related to Herbs from Traditional Chinese Medicine

Toxicogenomics represents the integration of genomics and toxicology to investigate the interaction between genes and environmental stress in human health. It is a scientific field that studies how the genome is involved in responses to environmental stressors and toxicants. The patterns of altered gene expression that are caused by specific exposures or disease outcomes reveal how toxicants may act and cause disease. Nowadays, toxicogenomics faces great challenges in discriminating the molecular basis of toxicity. We do believe that advances in this field will eventually allow us to describe all the toxicological interactions that occur within a living system. Toxicogenomic responses of a toxic agent in one species (e. g., laboratory animals) may predict the mode of action in another species (e. g., humans) (predictive toxicology). Development and application of toxicogenomic databases and new bioinformatics tools are among the most important aspects of toxicogenomic research which will facilitate sharing and interpretation of the huge amount of biological information generated in this field. Medicinal herbs have played an important role in pharmacy from ancient to modern times. Nowadays, there is a revival of interest in medicinal plants and an increasing scientific interest in bioactive natural products. Medicinal herbs are usually considered to be nontoxic. However, the consumption of herbs could produce prominent toxic effects either due to inherent toxicity or to contaminants (heavy metals, microorganisms, pesticides, toxic organic solvents, radioactivity, etc.). Therefore, a critical assessment of their toxicity is an urgent issue. This review explores the field of toxicogenomics, pinpoints some of its research approaches and describes the challenges it faces. In particular, Chinese herbal preparations have been implicated.