Tu Youyou is a Chinese medical scientist, chemist
and pharmacist who shared the Nobel Prize for medicine-2015 with Satoshi Omura and William.C.Campbell.
The prize was awarded for her significant works on novel therapy against
malaria; specifically, for her work on a drug called artemisinin and its derivatives.
What is Artemisinin?
It is a sesquiterpene lactone
drug that contains an unusual peroxide bridge, which is important in the drug’s
mechanism of action. It was isolated from the Chinese herb called sweet
wormwood or Artemisia
annua. Its derivatives used as antimalarial drugs which reduce the
number of parasites in the blood of malarial patients, thereby helps them
recover from the disease. Artemisinin-based
combination therapies (ACT’s) produced substantial results against deadly
malarial parasites and are recommended by WHO as an uncomplicated way of
treatingP.falciparum malaria.
Work’s of Tu Youyou: She
was the head of China’s research to find treatment against malaria which they
named it as Project523. She studied various Chinese traditional herbs which
were said to be effective against Malaria. In the year 1971, researchers under
her supervision were able to find out the antimalarial effects of an extract of
quinghao(Artemisia annua).
Artemisinin– though
proved effective against malaria,, it’s extraction was difficult as it was
neither water-soluble nor dissolved in the ether. It was Professor Tu
You who developed methods to extract artemisinin. During the process, she was able to
synthesizeDihydroartemisinin which
was water-soluble. She proved its efficacy and elucidated its structure,
thereby pioneering the synthesis of its derivatives, their production and
Marketing as a drug.
It took 33years to get WHO’s recognition for the use of artemisinin’s derivatives as an antimalarial drug. Thanks to Tu Youyou’s discoveries and inventions that saved and
saving millions of humans worldwide.
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