Tu Youyou
The Woman Behind Behind the Cure of Malaria
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By: Alyssa Shi ‘26 Women In STEM: Issue 5.
屠呦呦
u Youyou ( ) is an exceptionally competent and prestigious Chinese pharmaceutical scientist who is known for her key contributions to the discovery of artemisinin ( in Chinese) in malaria treatment, which saved millions of lives. Due to her significant involvement in anti-malaria drugs, she was the first Chinese woman laureate of the Lasker Award in 2011 and the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
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青蒿
Tu Youyou was born in 1930 in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province of China. She contracted tuberculosis at 16 years old, which postponed her education for two years. Since then she was determined to study medicine to help other patients who were afflicted by diseases like she was. She pursued a herbal medicine degree at Beijing Medical College and graduated in 1955 at the age of 24. Due to the tremendous casualties that malaria caused in the Vietnam War, Vietnam requested China for help in battling malaria. To help fight against the disease, Tu was appointed as the team leader of a national project named Project 523 to develop an antimalarial method in 1969, two years after it was launched on May 23rd,1967.
Before Tu started her work, scientists worldwide screened over 240,000 herbs (1) to find synthetic compounds for the cure of malaria, but none of them succeeded. Tu had the idea of researching ancient Chinese herbs because of her strong foundation in both Western and Chinese medicine. She compiled a notebook namely the collection of Single Practical Prescriptions for Anti-Malaria. Her team screened and investigated over 2,000 herbs and identified possible antimalarial 640 recipes at the first stage of the classic books, and 380 extracts were tested on mice. (2) The process was painstaking, but she was determined to sacrifice her personal life for this top priority. HYPATIA JOURNAL
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