Integrated Database of Materia Medica (IDMM), a consolidated cross-cultural resource for data-driven research in traditional medicine.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Traditional medicine has played a significant role in the evolution of modern medicine, with many widely used drugs originating from natural compounds identified in traditional medicinal materials. Distinct systems of traditional medicine, such as Traditional Chinese Medicine and traditional Indian medicine, exhibit both shared and system-specific characteristics in their material sources and uses. However, to date, no database has systematically consolidated key information on medicinal materials across multiple systems of traditional medicine.

AIM OF THE STUDY: The objective of this work is to develop a systematized database of traditional medicinal materials that integrates heterogeneous data sources, standardizes identifiers, and enables cross-system analyses to advance data-driven research in traditional medicine, maximizing its potential in healthcare and drug discovery.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: This work curated data related to medicinal materials of 5 cultural systems of traditional medicine. Key information on traditional medicinal materials used in China, Japan, South Korea, and Thailand was extracted from official pharmacopoeias of the respective countries, whereas that on Indian medicinal materials were obtained from IMPPAT database in addition to Ayurveda, Unani, and Siddha pharmacopoeias. Data on chemical constituents were collected from several databases of medicinal materials and natural products. Botanical nomenclature and chemical identifiers used by different databases were unified by integrating WCVP database and PubChem database, respectively. Moreover, each chemical compound was subjected to category prediction by a previously published AgreementPred framework to generate a confidence-ranked set of compound category annotations. Finally, the Integrated Database of Materia Medica (IDMM) web database was developed based on unified and standardized data using a serverless scalable approach.

RESULTS: Data related to traditional medicinal materials of 5 cultural systems were effectively consolidated, revealing overlaps and uniqueness in the materials used in distinct systems, together with the chemical constituents which also included those documented under different synonyms in various databases. IDMM website (www.idmm.net) presents consolidated key information of each unique materia medica (MM) defined as a specific part of a taxonomic origin, visual resources including material photographs and analytical chromatograms of selected materials, as well as cheminformatics-based category annotations of their chemical constituents.

CONCLUSION: IDMM was constructed by integrating data from diverse data sources including databases of medicinal materials, natural products, botanical organisms, and chemical information. It is freely available at www.idmm.net, presenting consolidated information on cross-cultural traditional medicinal materials and their chemical constituents, as well as cheminformatics-based category annotations of each compound contained in the materials.