Tu Youyou

The Woman Behind Behind the Cure of Malaria

By: Alyssa Shi ‘26

Women In STEM: Issue 5.

Tu Youyou ( 屠 呦 呦 ) is an exceptionally competent and prestigious Chinese pharmaceutical scientist who is known for her key contributions to the discovery of artemisinin (⻘蒿 素 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.

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.

She even put her four-year-old daughter in a nursery and left her one-year-old to her parents After testing the remedies on rodents, one extract named Artemisia was found in a 1600-year-old Chinese medicine book (3), where it was mentioned as the treatment of malaria symptoms. It seemed to generate positive results in the inhibition of parasite growth with 40 percent of the highest inhibition rates

After rereading the recipe from 1,600 years ago, in which the wormwood is soaked in water patients could drink the juice, (4) Tu found out it was the temperature that affected the effectiveness of Artemisia since it was boiled and its active ingredients might have been damaged. She redesigned the whole method in 1971. The results showed that using ether solvent which boiled at 35°C and removed the acidic component of Artemisia, the remaining neutral part generated 100 percent of the inhibition rate on rodent plasmodium To ensure the safety of clinical trials, Tu and her colleagues volunteered to be the first human samples, and it turned out no side effects occurred. She then organized clinical trials for the patients, and all the illnesses were cleared out within one day with the use of artemisinin-based therapy.

Two decades later, artemisinin (Qinghaosu ⻘蒿素 in Chinese) was recognized by the World Health Organization as the first line of treatment for malaria

Tu’s role was also revealed in 2011 by the Lasker Foundation, which lauded the discovery of artemisinin as “arguably the most important pharmaceutical intervention in the last half century”. (5)She was also the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine receiver, which changed history as the first Chinese woman winning the Nobel Prize.

Works

Cited

“ Liao, F (2009b) Discovery of artemisinin (Qinghaosu) Molecules, 14(12), 5362–5366 https://doiorg/103390/molecules14125362

Tu YOUYOU (nd) https://scientificwomennet/women/youyou-tu-97

SITNFlash (2020, November 18) Youyou Tu An Exceptional Nobel Laureate - Science in the News Science in the News https://sitnhmsharvardedu/flash/2020/youyou-tu-anexceptional-nobel-laureate/

Belluz, J (2015, October 6) For 40 years, no one knew this woman discovered a malaria cure Now she's won a Nobel Vox https://wwwvoxcom/2015/10/6/9461471/nobelmalaria-tu-youyou

The Nobel Prize | Women who changed science | Tu Youyou (nd)