Chinese Nobel Prize winner Tu Youyou’s drug has saved lives of millions of malaria sufferers
A frontline drug in the fight against malaria, artemisinin has a history going back many centuries, for it traces its past to ancient Chinese medicine.
The mainland scientist Tu Youyou, who helped discover its therapeutic treasures in laboratory work at the height of the mainland’s Cultural Revolution, was honoured on Monday when she jointly won the 2015 Nobel Prize for medicine.
Here are some facts about the drug.
What is it?
Artemisinin kills Plasmodium parasites that cause malaria. It is derived from a plant called sweet wormwood – Artemisia annua in Latin, or qinghao in Chinese.
I’m reasonably confident that we can get another five to seven – maybe 10 years’ life out of our artemisinin combination approach
It is in use today because of work in 1970s by Tu and her team, who spotted references to a fever-easing plant in ancient Chinese medical texts and sought to extract the active ingredient to combat malaria.
From the 1990s, artemisinin gradually took on a frontline role, replacing previous generations of medicines that had lost their effectiveness as malaria parasites became resistant to them.
The drug acted fast initially to attack the parasite, but was used in conjunction with longer-lasting medicines to destroy those parasites that continued to hold out, said Teresa Tiffert, a malaria researcher at Britain’s Cambridge University.
How did it change malaria treatment?
Artemisinin has greatly increased the odds of survival for people hit with the most stubborn strains of the disease.