Letter to the Editor
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Oncol. Jan 15, 2025; 17(1): 101581
Published online Jan 15, 2025. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v17.i1.101581
Network pharmacology: Changes the treatment mode of "one disease-one target" in cancer treatment
Shuai Liu, Yong-Wei Yu
Shuai Liu, Department of Cardiology, The First People’s Hospital of Jiashan, Jiaxing 314100, Zhejiang Province, China
Yong-Wei Yu, Department of Critical Care Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310000, Zhejiang Province, China
Author contributions: Liu S wrote the manuscript; Yu YW designed the study and revised the manuscript; All listed authors consent to the submission.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Yong-Wei Yu, PhD, Doctor, Department of Critical Care Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine, No. 79 Qingchun Road, Hangzhou 310000, Zhejiang Province, China. yuyongwei@zju.edu.cn
Received: September 19, 2024
Revised: October 7, 2024
Accepted: October 31, 2024
Published online: January 15, 2025
Processing time: 83 Days and 19.5 Hours
Abstract

The article concluded that network pharmacology provides new ideas and insights into the molecular mechanism of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) treatment of cancer. TCM is a new choice and hot spot in the field of cancer treatment. We have also previously published studies on TCM and network pharmacology. In this letter, we summarize the new paradigm of network pharmacology in cancer treatment mechanisms.

Keywords: Network pharmacology; Cancer; Multicomponent; Multitarget; Therapy

Core Tip: Cancer cannot be effectively treated against a single gene target because it involves the synergy of different gene groups. Network pharmacology provides strong evidence of "multicomponent-multitarget" synergistic effects for the treatment of cancer with Chinese medicine.