Medicine Nobel Prize For 2015

The 2015 Nobel prize for medicine or physiology has been awarded to scientists who developed new drugs for roundworm parasites and malaria. The treatments have improved the lives of 3.4 billion people around the world, says the Nobel committee.

Half the prize was awarded to Chinese scientist Youyou Tu, who drew on traditional Chinese medicines to discover artemisinin, one of the most important malaria drugs used today. She tested the drug on herself before starting clinical trials.
Irish parasitologist William C. Campbell and Japanese microbiologist Satoshi Ōmura share the other half the prize for discoveries that led to ivermectin, which has dramatically reduced the incidence of river blindness and lymphatic filariasis.
Both drugs have been available widely at low cost across the world. Artemisinin is used in all areas where malaria is endemic. When used in combination therapies, it is estimated to reduce mortality from malaria by more than 20 per cent overall and by more than 30 per cent in children. For Africa alone, this means that more than 100,000 lives are saved each year.
Omura studied Streptomyces bacteria to find compounds that work against harmful microbes. Campbell, working in the US, took promising strains identified by Omura and isolated avermectin, which he found to be effective against parasites in farm animals. Later it was developed into a more effective compound, ivermectin, which went on sale as an antiparasitic drug in 1981.
Large-scale ivermectin treatment programmes have had a huge impact on the parasitic worm diseases lymphatic filariasis (also called elephantiasis) and onchocerciasis, or river blindness. In 2012 the World Health Organization laid out plans aiming to eliminate or control both diseases by 2020. Omura reported in 2011 that it is likely that well over 200 million people will be taking the drug annually over the subsequent decade.
Working in the 1960s and 70s, Tu reviewed more than 2000 recipes for traditional herbal remedies to look for new malaria therapies. She discovered that sweet wormwood, Artemisia annua, was a promising candidate, but her initial attempts to purify the active ingredient failed.
After revisiting a 1700-year-old recipe, she realised that her technique might be damaging the active ingredient. She developed a new lower-temperature method, and found that the resulting drug was 100 per cent effective in mice and monkeys. In clinical trials with infected patients, it eradicated the malaria parasite within 30 hours.
Tu published her work in 1977 but remained anonymous, as was customary in China at the time. Now 84, she has waited almost four decades for recognition. Profiled by New Scientist in 2011, she played down her achievements, saying: “What I have done was what I should have done as a return for the education provided by my country.”

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