Tu Youyou: the first Chinese woman with Nobel medicine – Market Zrdowia

The 85-year-old Youyou Here is the first Chinese woman who received the Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology and 12 women highlighted the most prestigious science prize. Antimalarial drug developed at the height of the Cultural Revolution era.

Tu Youyou received the Nobel Prize for discoveries concerning new ways of treating malaria. Among the winners of this year’s awards were also Satoshi Omura together with William C. Campbell, for discoveries concerning new method of treatment of infections caused by parasitic nematodes.

In the ’60s the twentieth century. Specialists around the world searching for new, more effective a drug for malaria, which decimated the population then many countries in Africa and Asia, including some regions of China. Tested 240 thousand. substances, but none of them proved to be effective in the fight against this infection. The new drug was needed because less and less effective became chloroquine (quinine), an older anti-inflammatory drug and pierwotniakobójczy. Consent to research on the drug gave himself Mao Zedong.

Tu Youyou decided to go back to the old rules of ancient Chinese medicine. That was in 1969. In times of greatest severity so. the Cultural Revolution in China, when scientists were recognized for a lower social class. Chinese Nobel laureate was then 39 years.

Here we investigated more than 2 thousand. ancient recipes for medicines and for 1971. drew up with his band 380 herb extracts from more than 200 plants that have been tested on mice. Useful turned out to be only one herb Artemisia annua called (the so-called. Artemisia annua); in ancient times it was used to treat fever. How to prepare this herb researcher found in text dating from before 1,600 years. Initially, however concoction poorly acted.

There seemed to be searching for an antimalarial drug, once again fails. Here then he come to the conclusion that the old recipe preparation in hot water preparation is inadequate because it destroys the properties of mugwort. They brew a potion stopped and began to draw in warm water. It was the right way. In 1972. Novel formulation showed great effectiveness in experiments on mice and then in monkeys.

A year later, in 1973., Exploring the properties of this drug, synthesized it here accidentally. Yes dihydroartemizynę received.

Tu Youyou showed courage as a scientist. When it was decided to conduct the first clinical trials, first he tried the drug on himself. Only when personally convinced that it is safe, being studied in human volunteers. Publications on this subject was published in 1977. Was anonymous. The new drug called artemisinin, the name of the plant from which it was obtained.