A culture in the balance

Traditional Chinese medicine and Western science face almost irreconcilable differences. Can systems biology bring them together? Jane Qiu reports. Trawling for useful drugs in the arcane potions of traditional Chinese medicine is not new. With a few exceptions, the well looks dry. But now pharmacologists are turning to a more modern 'holistic' approach to interrogate the millennia-old practice more thoroughly. If the staying power of traditional cures is due to complex combinations of active ingredients, the thinking goes, systems biology will reveal them.