Bio-soft matter derived from traditional Chinese medicine: characterizations of hierarchical structure, assembly mechanism, and beyond

Structural and functional explorations on bio-soft matter such as micelles, vesicles, nanoparticles, aggregates or polymers derived from traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has emerged as a new topic in the field of TCM. The discovery of such cross-scaled bio-soft matter may provide a unique perspective for unraveling the new effective material basis of TCM as well as developing innovative medicine and biomaterials. Despite the rapid rise of TCM-derived bio-soft matter, their hierarchical structure and assembly mechanism must be unambiguously probed for a further in-depth understanding of their pharmacological activity. In this review, the current emerged TCM-derived bio-soft matter assembled from either small molecules or macromolecules will be introduced, and particularly the unambiguous elucidation of their hierarchical structure and assembly mechanism with combined electron microscopic and spectroscopic techniques will be depicted. The pros and cons of each technique are also discussed. The future challenges and perspective of TCM-derived bio-soft matter are outlined, particularly the requirement for their precise in situ structural determination is highlighted.