The 2015 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine

Abstract

The Nobel Prize in Physiology orMedicine 2015 was awarded to Willliam C Campbell, Satoshi Omura and Youyou Tu for their research leading to the discovery of potent parasiticidal drugs that save millions of lives across the world. The work of Campbell and Omura led to the discovery of Ivermectin, which till date remains one of the most effective drugs against helminth parasites causing onchocerciasis (river blindness) and lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis) as well as veterinary parasites. Youyou Tu’s discovery of Artemisinin, a potent anti-malarial drug from Artemisia annua, a medicinal plant used in Chinese traditional medicine, highlights the power of combining traditional knowledge with modern methods of drug discovery and development. The Nobel Committee stated that the award to Tu was not for honouring Chinese medicine, but for how she employed scientific procedures to extract the active ingredient and produce a wonderful drug that is saving millions of lives. Let us hope that a scientifically validated drug based on Indian traditional medicine will bring similar global recognition to India in the near future. This Nobel Prize is likely to rejuvenate natural productbased drug discovery programs which are in a state of neglect due to the dominance of combinatorial chemistry and highthroughput screening-based approaches.