In recent years, medicinal plants have gained much attention as potential source of bioactives for the development of novel herbal drugs for primary healthcare. However, phytotherapeutic mechanisms of action of phytomedicines need to be explored comprehensively. Out of the available strategies for the said purpose, metabolomics is one, which results in the production of inclusive metabolite profiles providing a clear understanding of diagnostic changes in the levels of metabolites, leading to therapeutic monitoring of drug targets through the elucidation of metabolomic pathways. On the other hand, proteomics is also a powerful strategy to deal with systematic protein expression analysis and analyze different biomarkers compared to metabolomics during drug treatment. Currently, ¹H nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, mass spectrometry (MS), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, gas chromatography equipped with mass spectrometry, liquid chromatography coupled with MS and ultra-performance liquid chromatography-MS coupled with multivariate statistical techniques, such as principle component analysis, partial least square and orthogonal-partial least square are among the widely applicable analytical tools for metabolite profiling, whereas two-dimensional electrophoresis and matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight -MS are the most accepted analytical methods for proteomic biomarker investigation. The present review summarizes the recent developments and perspectives of the biomarker investigation strategies so as to elaborate their imperative role for sustainable herbal drug developments.

近年来，药用植物作为生物活性物质的潜在来源受到了广泛关注，这些生物活性物质是开发用于初级保健的新型草药的潜在来源。然而，需要对植物药的植物治疗作用机理进行全面研究。在用于上述目的的可用策略中，代谢组学是一种方法，它可以产生包容性代谢物谱，从而清楚地了解代谢物水平的诊断变化，从而通过阐明代谢组学途径对药物靶标进行治疗性监测。另一方面，与药物治疗期间的代谢组学相比，蛋白质组学也是一种强大的策略，可以处理系统的蛋白质表达分析并分析不同的生物标志物。目前，¹H核磁共振波谱，质谱（MS），傅立叶变换红外光谱，配备质谱的气相色谱，液相色谱与MS结合以及超高效液相色谱-MS与多元统计技术结合，例如主成分分析，部分最小二乘和正交偏最小二乘是用于代谢物分析的广泛应用的分析工具，而二维电泳和基质辅助激光解吸电离飞行时间-MS是蛋白质组学生物标志物研究最常用的分析方法。本综述总结了生物标志物研究策略的最新发展和前景，以阐述其在可持续草药开发中的重要作用。