Background. Iranian traditional medicine (ITM) is a holistic medical system that uses a wide range of medicinal substances to treat disease. Reorganization and standardization of the data on ITM concepts is a necessity for optimal use of this rich source. In an initial step towards this goal, we created a database of ITM materia medica. Main Body. Primarily based on Makhzan al-Advieh, which is the most recent encyclopedia of materia medica in ITM with the largest number of monographs, a database of natural medicinal substances was created using both text mining methods and manual editing. UNaProd, a Universal Natural Product database for materia medica of ITM, is currently host to 2696 monographs, from herbal to animal to mineral compounds in 16 diverse attributes such as origin and scientific name. Currently, systems biology, and more precisely systems medicine and pharmacology, can be an aid in providing rationalizations for many traditional medicines and elucidating a great deal of knowledge they can offer to guide future research in medicine. Conclusions. A database of materia medica is a stepping stone in creating a systems pharmacology platform of ITM that encompasses the relationships between the drugs, their targets, and diseases. UNaProd is hyperlinked to IrGO and CMAUP databases for Mizaj and molecular features, respectively, and it is freely available at http://jafarilab.com/unaprod/.

Background Iranian traditional medicine, also known as Persian Medicine, is a holistic school of medicine with a long prolific history. It describes numerous concepts and the relationships between them. However, no unified language system has been proposed for the concepts of this medicine up to the present time. Considering the extensive terminology in the numerous textbooks written by the scholars over centuries, comprehending the totality of concepts is obviously a very challenging task. To resolve this issue, overcome the obstacles, and code the concepts in a reusable manner, constructing an ontology of the concepts of Iranian traditional medicine seems a necessity. Construction and content Makhzan al-Advieh, an encyclopedia of materia medica compiled by Mohammad Hossein Aghili Khorasani, was selected as the resource to create an ontology of the concepts used to describe medicinal substances. The steps followed to accomplish this task included (1) compiling the list of classes via examination of textbooks, and text mining the resource followed by manual review to ensure comprehensiveness of extracted terms; (2) arranging the classes in a taxonomy; (3) determining object and data properties; (4) specifying annotation properties including ID, labels (English and Persian), alternative terms, and definitions (English and Persian); (5) ontology evaluation. The ontology was created using Protégé with adherence to the principles of ontology development provided by the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontology (OBO) foundry. Utility and discussion The ontology was finalized with inclusion of 3521 classes, 15 properties, and 20,903 axioms in the Iranian traditional medicine General Ontology (IrGO) database, freely available at http://ir-go.net/. An indented list and an interactive graph view using WebVOWL were used to visualize the ontology. All classes were linked to their instances in UNaProd database to create a knowledge base of ITM materia medica. Conclusion We constructed an ontology-based knowledge base of ITM concepts in the domain of materia medica to help offer a shared and common understanding of this concept, enable reuse of the knowledge, and make the assumptions explicit. This ontology will aid Persian medicine practitioners in clinical decision-making to select drugs. Extending IrGO will bridge the gap between traditional and conventional schools of medicine, helping guide future research in the process of drug discovery.