First Chinese Woman to be Awarded Nobel Prize

A group of three scientists have earned and been awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine. This prestigious award was handed to them after having successfully unlocked revolutionary treatments to combat malaria and roundworm. The medical breakthroughs of these scientists are helping to roll back the two parasitic diseases that destroy the lives of millions.

 

Scientist Tu Youyou of China won half of the award for her outstanding work in artemisinin. This is a rug based on ancient Chinese herbal medication. She is the first Chinese woman national to win a Nobel Prize in science.

 

Irish-born William Campbell and Satoshi Omura of Japan shared the other half for an anti-roundworm treatment dubbed avermectin, derived from soil-dwelling bacteria.

"These two discoveries have provided humankind with powerful new means to combat these debilitating diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people annually," the Nobel committee said.

 

"The consequences in terms of improved human health and reduced suffering are immeasurable."

 

Tu, 84, has been chief professor at the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine since 2000.

 

She conducted research in the 1970s, at the height of China's Cultural Revolution that led to the discovery of artemisinin, a drug that has slashed the number of malaria deaths.

 

The treatment is based on traditional medicine, a herb called sweet wormwood or Artemisia annua.

 

Artemisinin-based drugs are now the standard combination for treating malaria since the mosquito-transferred Plasmodium parasite developed resistance to other drug types like chloroquine.

 

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there were about 198 million malaria infections in 2013 and 584,000 deaths, most of them African children.

The other half of the prize honoured Omura and Campbell for "a new class of drugs with extraordinary efficacy against parasitic diseases," the Nobel statement said.

 

Registered drugs derived from avermectin "have radically lowered" the incidence of river blindness and elephantiasis, both caused by parasitic worms, it added.

River blindness, also known as onchocerciasis, is caused by a worm transmitted to humans through the bites of infected blackflies. Its symptoms include disfiguring skin conditions and visual impairment, including permanent blindness.