How did Tu Youyou, nicknamed "Three No Scientists" by netizens (without a doctorate, overseas study background and academician title) win the Nobel Prize and "beat" Stephen Hawking and Max Planck to become the greatest figures in the 20th century? In the Vietnam War in the 1960s, because of the strong US military, backward Vietnam had to use the jungle as a cover. However, due to the large number of mosquitoes in the jungle, malaria is prevalent, and both Vietnam and the United States have suffered serious personnel losses due to malaria.
Vietnam turned to China for help because there was an epidemic of malaria in southern China at that time, and Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou instructed to set up an emergency team to develop new antimalarial drugs. The task is urgent and arduous. Because this is an emergency military project for foreign aid and combat readiness, for the sake of confidentiality, this project is also carried out in the name of a military project. The task code is "523".
? 65438-0969, Chinese Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine accepted the research task of antimalarial drugs, and Tu Youyou was the head of the science and technology group. At that time, American researchers were also studying antimalarial drugs, but the screening of 240,000 drugs failed, so it was also a huge challenge for China. The "523 Project" is divided into two groups to develop antimalarial drugs: western medicine group and Chinese medicine group. Tu Youyou first inspected the medical classics in the history of China and visited Chinese medicine practitioners all over the country alone. It was at this time that Artemisia annua entered her field of vision.
This kind of millet was recorded in ancient medical books two thousand years ago. On the basis of collecting more than 2,000 pharmacies, she sorted out an anti-malaria prescription with 640 kinds of drugs as the main ones. At first, the inhibition rate of Artemisia annua against malaria was relatively high, reaching 68%. But in later experiments, this effect did not appear repeatedly.
? Later, Tu Youyou was inspired by Ge Hong's "Elbow Reserve Emergency" in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. "Artemisia annua is holding it, stained with two liters of water and juiced." She suddenly realized that boiling at high temperature might destroy the biological activity of active ingredients. So she lowered the extraction temperature and changed from ethanol extraction to ether extraction with lower boiling point.