Targeting drug system (TDS) or targeted drug delivery system (TDDS) is a new kind of drug delivery system which could make drug to be directly concentrated on the target site with high curative effects and low side-effects. As the quintessence of Chinese culture, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has a large advantage in many disease clinical treatments, especially in cancer, hypertension and many other intractable diseases owing to their low toxicity and side-effects relative to western medicine. This article reviews literatures on development of TCM-targeted preparations which were published in the past 10 years. TDS including active-targeting, passive-targeting and physical-chemical-targeting preparations were introduced through domestic and overseas literatures to reveal the unique advantages of TCM-targeting preparations in drug delivery system. In this article, we have reviewed some kinds of TCM-targeting preparations and indicated that great attention should be paid to the research on the TCM-targeting preparations.
Keywords: Clinical treatments; TCM-targeted preparations; pharmacological effects; targeting drug delivery system; traditional Chinese medicine.