Here is the story of Tu Youyou, the 84 year-old Chinese woman who won 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine for discovering Artemisinin, the best proven cure for Malaria

Tu Youyou: blazes trail in China

When 39-year-old Tu Youyou was summoned in 1969 to Project 523, a military programme to find a cure for malaria, she privately hoped her work would eventually change the lives of millions.

The young pharmacologist at that moment had no idea that her life too was about to change.

In the tumultuous years that followed, Tu and her team managed to extract, through trial and error, a substance from Artemisia annu, or sweet wormwood, that proved effective in reducing mortality rates for patients suffering from malaria.

Their findings on the compound artemisinin eventually won Tu the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, making her the first Chinese scientist to win a Nobel Prize in science for work done in China, and the first Chinese woman to win any Nobel Prize.

Tu, now 84, appeared lighthearted about winning.

“Winning the Nobel Prize is not that important to me, but the honor attests that traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an inspiring resource that requires further research,” said Tu as she recalled the painstaking discovery of the therapy.

“Our country trained me, and so when the country needed me to do this, I certainly did my best,” she said.

Tu Youyou and a colleague in 1951

Project 523, named after the date it was created, was launched in 1967 at a time when some two to five hundred million people worldwide were estimated to be infected with malaria each year.

Millions died from the disease annually in the 1960s, with some types of malaria already developing resistance to traditional drugs such as quinine and chloroquine.

Finding a cure for the deadly disease took on extra urgency for Chinese experts after Vietnam’s leaders requested assistance from China during its war with the United States.

“It was a great responsibility, and a really difficult mission as well,” Tu said.

The time could not have been more hostile for Chinese intellectuals. The Cultural Revolution had sidelined experts, and scientific research in many fields came to a virtual halt.

The quest for a viable cure for malaria proved no easy job.

Before Tu joined the program as a team leader in 1969, more than 500 Chinese researchers had tested over 40,000 compounds and herbal medicines in search for an effective remedy, but to no avail.

A parallel U.S. research program that ran from 1963 to 1972 also generated no satisfactory results from a pool of more than 214,000 chemical compounds.

Having been trained in both Western and traditional Chinese medicine, Tu decided to tap into the wisdom of ancient China.

“We read antique books, looked for folk prescriptions, and consulted veteran TCM doctors,” she recalled. Even advice and suggestion letters sent to them by those with no medical background became a source of inspiration.

Tu Youyou: checking out the anti-malaria mixture

“But we were all focused on pepper at first, because in the first round of screening, it appeared to have much stronger inhibiting effects on plasmodium (the malaria-causing parasite),” she said. It was not until extracts from pepper and another more than 100 Chinese herbs all failed clinical trials that sweet wormwood regained Tu’s attention.

After three months, Tu and her team were down to 640 candidate herbs, including sweet wormwood, which had been used by Chinese doctors in ancient times as an ingredient to cure diseases such as influenza and malaria.

“But we were all focused on pepper at first, because in the first round of screening, it appeared to have much stronger inhibiting effects on plasmodium (the malaria-causing parasite),” she said.

It was not until extracts from pepper and another more than 100 Chinese herbs all failed clinical trials that sweet wormwood regained Tu’s attention.

Previous trials using sweet wormwood had generated inconsistent results, with the drug showing varying levels of inhibiting effects on plasmodium.

Tu Youyou (2nd R) speaks during a seminar celebrating her winning the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in Beijing

A 4th century Chinese text offered her a flash of inspiration. In his “Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergencies,” Ge Hong suggested squeezing a handful of wormwood soaked in water and then drinking the juice to treat malaria.

“It struck me that high temperatures may spoil whatever it is that helps treat malaria in the wormwood,” Tu said.

That proved to be the crucial step in finding what is now known as artemisinin, and the team soon developed a much more effective way to extract the compound by isolating it using diethyl ether at temperatures less than 60 degrees Celsius.

Animal trials proved a success and Tu volunteered herself as a test subject in the human trial that followed.

“I was the team leader, and I had the responsibility (to test the drug myself),” she said. Two other researchers on the teams also volunteered.

“Artemisinin is a gift for the people of the world from traditional Chinese medicine. It is of great importance in the fight against malaria and other infectious diseases and in protecting the health of the world’s people,” Tu said while giving credit to her research team.

The trials found no obvious side effects for humans, but years of hard work had spoiled Tu’s health anyway.

Her husband, Li Tingzhao, recalled that Tu would return home smelling of alcohol almost every day, and that her close contact with diethyl ether eventually led to toxic hepatitis.

Dizziness, nasal bleeding and skin allergies were routine.

But the sacrifices paid off. An artemisinin-based drug combination is now the standard regimen for malaria, and the World Health Organization lists artemisinin and related agents in its catalog of “Essential Medicines.”

Since 2000, more than 240 million people in Sub-Sahara Africa have benefitted from artemisinin, and more than 1.5 million lives are estimated to have been saved thanks to the new drug.

“Artemisinin is a gift for the people of the world from traditional Chinese medicine. It is of great importance in the fight against malaria and other infectious diseases and in protecting the health of the world’s people,” Tu said while giving credit to her research team.

“The (Nobel) prize is a credit for Chinese scientists’ collective efforts and shows the attention paid to TCM research by the international scientific community,” she said. “It is a proud moment for China and Chinese scientists.”

*Story Originally published by Xinhua