The time can be traced back to the 1960s. At that time, due to the resistance of plasmodium to quinine drugs, the prevention and treatment of malaria once again became a research topic of medical circles all over the world. Since the 1960s, the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other countries have spent a lot of manpower and material resources to find effective compounds with new structural types, but they have never achieved satisfactory results.
On May 23rd, 1967, China launched the project of "Research Cooperation on Malaria Control Drugs" with the code name "523". 1969, Tu Youyou was appointed as the research director of the Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine of the "523" project. Tu Youyou finally sorted out a collection of antimalarial prescriptions, including more than 640 kinds of herbs such as Artemisia annua and more than 2,000 kinds of Fang Yaozhong, by reading herbal medical books of past dynasties and visiting old Chinese medicine practitioners everywhere. However, in the initial animal experiments, the effect of Artemisia annua was not brilliant, and the search for Tu Youyou was once deadlocked.
What's wrong with it? Tu Youyou once again turned to China's ancient wisdom and looked through classic medical books. Suddenly, a few words in Ge Hong's "Elbow Emergency Prescription" firmly attracted her attention: "Hold Artemisia annua, dye it with two liters of water, wring the juice and take it." When she woke up the dreamer, she immediately realized that the problem might lie in the commonly used "water decoction" method, because high temperature would destroy the effective components in Artemisia annua L., so she immediately found another method to experiment with low boiling point solvent.
After 190 failures, they finally succeeded. 197 1 year, Tu Youyou's research group found Artemisia annua extract with 19 1 fold antimalarial effect in the low boiling point experiment. 1972, this achievement has attracted attention, and researchers have extracted effective antimalarial component artemisinin from this extract. These achievements did not stop Tu Youyou. 1992, in view of its high cost and difficulty in eradicating malaria, she invented an "upgraded version" of dihydroartemisinin with an antimalarial effect 10 times higher than the former.
Tu Youyou, female, born on February 30th, 1930, is a pharmacist, lifelong researcher and chief researcher of Chinese Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and director of artemisinin research and development center. 20 15 10 5, won the nobel prize in physiology or medicine for extracting artemisinin.
However, some people think that persistence in backwardness is feudalism, and it is good to admit that artemisinin belongs to traditional Chinese medicine. So some people rush to say that artemisinin is not a traditional Chinese medicine, but a chemical drug with a single component and a clear structure extracted from plants.
In order to prove that artemisinin is not a traditional Chinese medicine, it is also a matter of turning a blind eye. See how they argue irrationally-"this is just a prescription, not a Chinese medicine prescription."
Artemisinin is a traditional Chinese medicine. Firstly, its ingredients come from Artemisia annua, a traditional Chinese medicine, and secondly, its refining method is inspired by ancient Chinese medicine books. Don't say Artemisia annua is not a fox story like Artemisia annua. Artemisia annua is a big category, like Adenophora adenophora, including Radix Glehniae and Radix Glehniae, all of which belong to Radix Glehniae.
In fact, the process of extracting and refining artemisinin is essentially just a decocting process. For example, we used to boil medicine in a casserole, but now we have improved it and turned it into a decocting machine. You can't say you're not a Chinese doctor just because Jane has changed.
The extraction technology of artemisinin is like the improvement of decocting method, and no matter how to change it, it can't change the fact that its matrix is plant Chinese medicine.
So artemisinin is a traditional Chinese medicine.