Yunnan: A contributor to the discovery of artemisinin
�The successful finding of artemisinin is the collective achievement of the research team, and it is a collective honour for all Chinese scientists,� said Tu Yoyo, 2015 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine.
Chen Yunfen
Artemisinin and its main derivative artemether are praised by the international community as one of the largest gifts to mankind from China. However, it is little-known that Yunnan is also a contributor to this gift. Yunnan is Chinas largest artemether production base as well as the first area to extract artemisinin on a large scale.
In the R D and industrialization of artemisinin, Yunnan Institute of Materia Medica, Kunming Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd. and some other units have made important contributions. So far, the Coartem series produced by Kunming Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd. have become the worlds leading antimalarials, saving millions of lives.
After decades, the researchers who devoted great efforts to the discovery and extraction of artemisinin are now old or passed away. When the Chinese female pharmacist Tu Yoyo won 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her contribution to the study of artemisinin, the living researchers that have been involved in the development of artemisinin were emotional.
The discovery of artemisinin is the result of collaborative efforts by Chinese research institutes and personnel. On May 23, 1967, China set up the National Antimalarials Research Collaboration Group, and more than 20 young people of Yunnan Institute of Materia Medica successively joined in the research.
The discovery of artemisinin was full of twists and turns. After numerous failures, in early 1973, when going through literature, the researchers of Yunnan Institute of Materia Medica remembered that Compendium of Materia Medica recorded a plant belonging to the same family as Artemisia annua can repel mosquitoes when burned and cure malaria when mashed and taken. They thought it might be worth a try, so they collected Artemisia annua unique to Yunnan, prepared different solvents and extracted several crystals. When testing these crystals, the researchers found that the effective constituent of Crystal III could make the plasmodia in the heavily plasmodium-infected mouse blood smear disappear completely. After repeated testing and screening, the researchers finally extracted a large number of crystals from a species of Artemisia annua of Youyang, Sichuan, and this compound was later named artemisinin.
The successful discovery of artemisinin brought hope to effective treatment of malaria. In September 1974, the researchers carried out clinical trials on three typical cases of falciparum malaria. One case is a woman six months pregnant. Before the trial, the fetus was already dead and the woman had gone into a pre-coma. After five hours of taking artemisinin, the patient regained consciousness. The blood smear showed that the plasmodia in her body had been effectively controlled. The second case was a baby only four days old and the third case was a young patient with cerebral malaria. They were both critically ill with falciparum malaria. After taking artemisinin, their high fever was quickly brought under control.
With constant improvement, the artemisinin-based combination therapy has become the standard antimalarial therapy recommended by World Health Organization, and artemisinin has made a significant contribution to the worlds malaria treatment. Since 2000, according to WHO statistics, about 240 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have benefited from the artemisinin-based combination therapy and about 1.5 million people have avoided deaths from malaria thanks to Coartem.
