Abstract: Metabolic regulation is an important mechanism by which organisms adapt to changes in the internal and external environment. Metabolic small molecules function as versatile messengers involved in signaling networks and organ crosstalk, which carries great implications for understanding physiological processes, revealing disease mechanisms and discovering drug targets. In this review, we present an overview of the main progresses in metabolic regulation and drug target discovery researches in China, and look forward to its future direction, which may provide a reference for the drug development endeavor based on metabolic regulation.

Key words: metabolic regulation, target discovery, research progress, novel drug discovery