Catalyzing Drug Discovery Using Artificial Intelligence With Traditional Medicine

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with traditional medicine holds great promise for accelerating drug discovery and development. By mining ancient medical texts, ethnobotanical records, and modern literature, AI can help identify bioactive compounds and elucidate their mechanism of action. Machine learning and deep learning approaches enable rapid screening of chemical structures, prediction of biological activities, and optimization of drug-like properties, thereby reducing time and costs compared to conventional methods. Beyond discovery, AI also supports quality control and safety assessment of herbal and traditional formulations. However, challenges remain, including data privacy, intellectual property rights, and recognition of traditional knowledge holders, and the need for transparency and interpretability of AI models. This chapter covers an overview of the current landscape, highlighting opportunities, challenges, and future directions in harnessing AI to advance traditional medicine-based drug discovery.