Beating Parasites Wins Three Scientists Nobel Prize for Medicine

Discoveries of 3 Scientist – Development of Potent New Drugs – Parasitic Diseases

Discoveries of three scientists from China, Japan and Ireland that have led to the development of potent new drugs against parasitic diseases like malaria and elephantiasis has won the Nobel Prize for Medicine, recently. William Campbell- Irish-born and Japan’s Satoshi Omura won half of the prize in discovering avermectin, a derivative which has been utilised to treat hundreds of millions of people with river blindness as well as lymphatic filariasis or elephantiasis.

 Youyou Tu from China had been awarded the other half of the prize for discovering artemisinin, which is a drug that has reduced malaria deaths and the mainstay of combating the mosquito-borne disease. Around 3.4 billion people residing in poor countries are at risk of being affected by these parasitic diseases.

According to the Nobel Assembly at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, has stated that `these two discoveries had provided humankind with powerful new means to fight these debilitating diseases which affect hundreds of millions of people annually. The consequences with regards to improved human health and reduced suffering are immeasurable’.

Treatment Effective

Presently the medicine ivermectin, is a derivative of avermectin made by Merck & Company and is utilised all over the world to combat roundworm parasite, while artemisinin based drugs from firms like Sanofi and Novartis seem to be the main tool against malaria.

This breakthrough by Omura and Campbell, to fight the parasitic worms or helminths came about after researching on compounds from soil bacteria that led to the discovery of avermectin which was further modificed into ivermectin. The treatment is said to be so effective that river blindness and lymphatic filariasis now seems to be on the verge of elimination.

Youyou on the other hand turned to a traditional Chinese herbal medicine in a search for a better malaria treatment after the declining success of the earlier drugs choroquine and quinine which led to the isolation of artemisinin, a new class of anti-malaria drug. The Chair of the Nobel Committee, Juleen Zierath, had commented that they now had drugs which could kill the parasites early in their life cycle and they not kill them but tend to stop their infections from spreading.

Annual Award Ceremony – December 10

Colin Sutherland, a reader in parasitology at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine had said that the impact of artemisinin was thoughtful and was widely used all over the world that there could be risk of resistance problem. WHO has said that artemisinin resistance has been confirmed in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.

The last occasion when a Chinese citizen had won a Nobel was in 2012 when Mo Yan had received the literature award and China since then had desireda Nobel Prize in science. This seems to be the first Nobel Prize given to a Chinese scientist for the work carried out in China. Medicine prize for the first of the Nobel prizes awarded each year is 8 million Swedish crowns with one half going to Campbell and Omura while the other to Tu.

Each winner would also be receiving a diploma and a gold medal at the annual award ceremony on December 10, which is the anniversary of the death of prize founder Alfred Nobel. Prizes for achievements in literature, peace and science were first awarded in 1901 in accordance to the resolve of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel.