Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge is a traditional Chinese medicine commonly used for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases.It contains two kinds of effective ingredients:fat-soluble diterpene quinones and water-soluble phenolic com-pounds.It shows significant effects including anti-bacterial,anti-inflammatory,anti-thrombotic,hepato-protective,and antiox-idant properties and protection against myocardial ischemia.However,extraction ofactive components from S.miltiorrhiza di-rectly is challenging due to low purity.Furthermore,the limited material resources of S.miltiorrhiza affect its utility in clinical medicine and the sustainable exploitation of natural drugs.In order to overcome this challenge,chemistry,molecular biology and other scientific technologies are being explored to improve the yield and quality of S.miltiorrhiza,with considerable pro-gress made to date.Firstly,a variety of tanshinone and salvianolic acid compounds have been synthesized successfully from S. miltiorrhiza,while compounds such as tanshinone IIA have been structure-modified to improve solubility and bioavailability. Secondly,biological technologies such as induction of polyploidy,cell-suspension culture,and the induction of hairy-roots have been developed.Hairy root of S.miltiorrhiza,which is most widely used at present,can be manufactured on a large scale and harvested using a spherical gas-lifted bioreactor.Additionally,due to good genetic and chemical stability of the hairy root,it can be used as a research model for further development of S.miltiorrhiza.Thirdly,a variety ofbiotic and abiotic elici-tors have been exploited for the study of effective components of S.miltiorrhiza,which have different effects on the plant.Ap-propriate combinations of these elicitors could further improve the yield of active components of S.miltiorrhiza.Finally,with the development of molecular biology,secondary metabolite engineering has become a new hotspot of medicinal plant re-search.S.miltiorrhiza is confirmed as a model to study terpenoid metabolism,with several breakthroughs reported in the bio-synthesis of tanshinone compounds.Therefore,a key point for material resource development would be obtaining active components through genomic manipulation.In this paper,a comprehensive summary has been provided with regard to 4 as-pects including the synthesis of active components of S.miltiorrhiza,the application of biological technology,the regulation of secondary metabolism,and secondary metabolite engineering.This paper summarizes previous successful attempts for further promotion of research on S.miltiorrhiza.