PMC:5374364 / 35405-37277 JSONTXT

{"project":"2_test","denotations":[{"id":"28146102-26073844-69475435","span":{"begin":694,"end":697},"obj":"26073844"}],"text":"5. Conclusions and Perspectives\nOwing to the progress of new biotechnological tools, new approaches have been developed, including systems biology, signal transduction study, and RNA-sequencing-based whole genome/exome analysis, which provide us with massive amounts of omics data. However, we still do not know how to use these tools effectively. For example, we now know a number of chemicals showing estrogenic activity and the number is steadily increasing because they affect cells, tissues, and organs through complex and novel pathways of cell signaling, such as intracellular signal transduction, signal crosstalk/bypassing, and intercellular networks of autocrine/paracrine signaling [185,186]. This complex status would be the same as in the study and the application of TCM because, since estrogenic activity is one of the most important activities of effective components in herbs and has been shown to affect the human body, the findings about estrogen would be true for more complex statuses, which include other hormones and growth factors. Chemicals having other hormonal and growth-factor activities could show such complexities, and thus new approaches are needed to understand the effects of chemicals. Other than the pharmacological use of chemicals, DMA-based gene expression profiling and pathway-based testing of chemicals have been developed for the diagnosis of diseases and risk assessment of endocrine disruptors, where the development of new types of diagnostic tool is in progress, such as the in vitro diagnostic multivariate index assay (IVDMIA), and toxicity pathway-based risk management protocols, such as those proposed by the U.S. National Research Council [190]. Thus, a pathway-based evaluation of beneficial effects and the assessment of potential risks by means of omics technologies are needed for the study and development of TCM."}