TCMSID: a simplified integrated database for drug discovery from traditional chinese medicine

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been widely used in the treatment of various diseases for millennia. In the modernization process of TCM, TCM ingredient databases are playing more and more important roles. However, most of the existing TCM ingredient databases do not provide simplification function for extracting key ingredients in each herb or formula, which hinders the research on the mechanism of actions of the ingredients in TCM databases. The lack of quality control and standardization of the data in most of these existing databases is also a prominent disad-vantage. Therefore, we developed a Traditional Chinese Medicine Simplified Integrated Database (TCMSID) with high storage, high quality and standardization. The database includes 499 herbs registered in the Chinese pharmacopeia with 20,015 ingredients, 3270 targets as well as corresponding detailed information. TCMSID is not only a database of herbal ingredients, but also a TCM simplification platform. Key ingredients from TCM herbs are available to be screened out and regarded as representatives to explore the mechanism of TCM herbs by implementing multi-tool target prediction and multilevel network construction. TCMSID provides abundant data sources and analysis plat-forms for TCM simplification and drug discovery, which is expected to promote modernization and internationaliza-tion of TCM and enhance its international status in the future. TCMSID is freely available at https://tcm.scbdd.com.

Automated summary

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has a long history in treating various diseases, and TCM ingredient databases are becoming increasingly important in the modernization of TCM. However, existing databases lack simplification functions for extracting key ingredients and lack quality control and standardization. To address these issues, a high-quality and standardized Traditional Chinese Medicine Simplified Integrated Database (TCMSID) was developed, providing abundant data sources and analysis platforms to promote the modernization and internationalization of TCM.