Dai Shaoxing, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that many types of herbal medicines provide resources which could be used in developing anti-cancer medicine, but there was little systematic research.
"Our team found active anti-cancer constituents in 57 out of 2,402 types of herbal medicines," Dai was quoted as saying by state-run Xinhua news agency.
Dai cautioned that the chemical nature of some TCM is yet to be determined, and that patients should only take such medicine under medical guidance.