Artemisia annua, artemisinin, and the Nobel Prize: beauty of natural products and educational significance

Abstract

In the beautiful evening on December 10, 2015 (local time in Sweden), the annual Nobel Prize ceremony was hosted by the Swedish Royal Family at Stockholm’s City Hall, Stockholm, Sweden. Congratulations to all ten new Nobel Prize Laureates and thanks them for using their brightest talents to make our world better! The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Professors Youyou Tu, William C. Campbell, and Satoshi Omura for their inventions in novel therapies using natural product medicines that help humankind fight against diseases caused by two types of severe endemic parasites, and save millions of people’s lives [1]. The Nobel Prize awarded to Professor Tu was to recognize and appreciate her pioneering discovery of artemisinin from Artemisia annua and clinical innovation in fighting against malaria, one of the top three diseases leading to the loss of people’s life [2]. Since the announcement of the award in October 2015, hundreds of praising reports have been published in scientific journals and the media to introduce and appreciate Professor Tu’s scientific achievements and medicinal contributions to global health [1–3]. Particularly, people in China from the top administers of the central Chinese government to elementary school students have been excited to applaud, discuss, and comment on her greatest research achievements that benefit human health. Here, as a university’s teacher in Medicinal Plants, Phytochemistry, and Plant Natural Products, I would like to specifically highlight the beauty and the educational significance of the Nobel Prize awarded to Professor Tu. To me, the 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicines is the most magnificent award. Not only is it awarded to Professor Tu for her invention of the novel therapy treating malaria, but also it is awarded to her collaborative teams for their research efforts in the development of artemisinin for malaria treatment. After the Nobel Prize committee announced her as one of the winners of the award, Professor Tu has always humbly expressed that the honor should also belong to her entire team and collaborators. In her interviews and speeches, she always respectfully appreciated her team members and collaborators for their supportive collaboration 40 years ago. The discovery of artemisinin was carried out during the Cultural Revolution period in China [4]. The Chinese government funded a secret project coded as ‘‘Project 523’’ to treat severely lethal malaria associated with the Vietnam War. The code number means the date ‘‘the 23rd of May, 1967,’’ when the project was officially launched. In addition, my personal opinion is that the other main reason was the extremely severe endemic malaria (Da Bai Zi, in Chinese Pin Yin) in south China during 1960s and 1970s. For example, I was one of the malarial patients infected by Plasmodium falciparum in 1977. I also remember that many people in my village were victims of malaria. In 1967, a group of Chinese scientists were funded to develop effective medicines from Traditional Chinese Medicines to fight against lethal malaria. At that time, young Tu was one of the junior scientists in the entire national team. Tu and her team endeavored to screen hundreds of different Chinese medicinal plants. In October of 1971, Tu led her team for the first time to demonstrate the medicinal activity of A. annua in treating malaria [5]. By the end of 1972, she and SPECIAL TOPIC: Advances in Artemisinin Study