In particular, region specific hypermethylation over a hypomethylated genome is char acteristic of cancer cells. Drugs that target the altered epigenome selleck Paclitaxel for cancer treatment have been under investi gation. For example two compounds that inhibit histone deacetylases have been FDA approved for cutaneous T cell lymphoma. As histone modifications and DNA methylation are evolutionarily conserved regulatory mechanisms for cell functions, che micals, e. g. secondary metabolites, in plants and animals that modulate the human epigenome may be found. It is therefore not surprising that a recent study, of bioinfor matic nature yet at the pharmacopeia scale, found 30% of 3,000 traditional Chinese medicinals, the majority of which are herbs, were human epigenome interacting.

Human epigenome interacting herbs were extensively utilized in TCM formulas so that 99% of the studied for mulas were epigenome interacting. Furthermore, the epi genome interacting herbs were found to serve in the formulas as the major herbs, called Monarch in TCM herbalism, that target patients main syndrome. While modern western medicine remains the first choice for most patients, TCM, and other traditional med icines, has long been regarded as preventive or alternative for individuals at sub healthy conditions or as comple mentary for patients at terminal conditions. As personal ized medicine starts gaining impetus in modern western medicine, TCM has long been practicing tailored treatment, which is exemplified by the many possible dif ferent TCM syndromes that can be diagnosed to patients of a same disease.

A medicine that is integrative of mod ern western medicines pathway targeting and TCMs epigenome modulating therapy will be beneficial to pa tients well being. A better understanding of TCM syn dromes is essential. The diagnosed TCM syndrome of an individual can remain stable beyond the time span of a cell cycle. Evidence from recent studies demonstrates that his tone modifications faithfully predict cell fates in various cellular contexts. A link between TCM syndrome and epigenomic change can therefore be hypothesized. In an attempt to address the hypothesis, we propose to look at TCM medicinals first because of the following two observations 1 TCM doctrine dictates that TCM syn dromes should be treated by the counteracting medicinals .

and 2 the cold hot annotations of most TCM medicinals are available as they have been characterized and documented ever since the first TCM materia medica 2,000 years ago. We Dacomitinib undertook the analysis in the following way. We first tested if the cold hot and yin yang TCM properties are, in a modern biological sense, viable through their relatedness in the phylogenetic tree of the medicinals. We next identified, using public chemical protein interaction resources, the TCM medicinals whose chemical ingredients modulate DNA methylation and histone modifications of human cells.