有效成分是中药治病疗疾的物质基础，是阐释中医药传统理论科学性的有力工具，但一味强调中药有效成分，忽略中药的“因证取效”特点，落入模仿跟踪西药研究的窠臼，不能促进中医药的发展。正确理解传统中药功效原理，借助于现代生物学先进技术，科学分析中药治疗有效病例，探索中药作用机制，揭示疾病发生机制，寻找作用物质，是中药研究的必有之路。
Effective ingredients are the material base for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) to treat disease, also are the powerful method to explain the science of TCM theory. But to only emphasis the effetive ingredient and to neglect the feature “based on symptoms to take effect” of TCM, it will falled into imitating the methods of western medicine, so there is little contribution to TCM development. To correctly comprehend the principal of TCM, draw assistance from advanced modern biology technology, scientific analysis the valid cases of TCM, explore the mechanism of action of TCM, to search the material curing disease are the necessary paths of TCM research.