Where is the hope for drug discovery? Let history tell the future.

For drug discovery, historical experience is always of significance. Through examining the history of traditional medicines, we find that these medicines have more implications for drug discovery than just providing new chemical entities. The history of traditional medicines indicates that they depended more on the combination of natural agents than on screening new agents to find new remedies. This phenomenon suggests that shifting the current drug discovery paradigm from 'finding new-entity drugs' to 'combining existing agents' may be helpful for overcoming the 'more investment, fewer drugs' challenge. We show that clues to finding antidementia combinatorial drugs can be derived from traditional medicine formulae. It seems that to create a brighter future of drug discovery, we would better go back to history.