20 15 Tu Youyou, a researcher at Chinese academy of traditional Chinese medicine, won the nobel prize in physiology or medicine for discovering artemisinin, a new drug for malaria treatment. In 20 16, Tu Youyou won the highest national science and technology award. At the beginning of this year, Tu Youyou, who is 88 years old, brushed the screen again. It turns out that since the award, she has not been supporting the elderly at home, but has been leading the team to work hard and achieved a series of important results. For example, she found that dihydroartemisinin was effective in the treatment of lupus erythematosus.
For this legendary figure, this legendary drug, there are many problems that often plague the public. Is Tu Youyou the first China scientist to win the Nobel Prize? Of all the Nobel Prize achievements, how high is this one? What is the anti-malaria situation in the world? Artemisinin is the result of collective collaboration, so what is Tu Youyou's contribution? Why is the Nobel Prize only awarded to Tu Youyou? Is artemisinin a victory of TCM, or has nothing to do with TCM? ……
Below, we will analyze these common questions in the form of answering questions. I hope that after reading it, you can have a clear understanding of Tu Youyou and artemisinin's evaluation system and way of thinking, as well as the wider scientific community.
I need to explain here that my knowledge of medicine and biology is very limited, so I am far from giving professional answers. My major is theoretical and computational chemistry. The molecular structure, extraction and structural identification methods of artemisinin belong to the chemical category, so I can still understand these aspects. What I want to do next is based on these chemical professional knowledge, and more broadly, on my understanding of the operation of the scientific community. If there are superficial mistakes, experts are welcome to correct them.
1. Q: Is Tu Youyou the first China scientist to win the Nobel Prize?
No. 1957 Nobel Prize winners in physics Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao were both from China when they won the prize. Later, they became American citizens (Yang Zhenning 1964, Li Zhengdao 1962). On 20 15, Yang Zhenning renounced American citizenship and resumed China citizenship.
Ding Zhaozhong (1976 Physics Prize) and many other China people won the Nobel Prize in Natural Science, but they all won the prize with American or British nationality. Including Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao, all of whom received graduate education abroad.
Tu Youyou studied in Beijing Medical College (now peking university health science center) and then worked in the Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine. At that time, there was no postgraduate system, and the famous pharmacologist Lou Cen was equivalent to her postgraduate tutor. Therefore, Tu Youyou's education is in China, and her description should be "the first scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Natural Science and was trained in China".
2. Q: Where does Tu Youyou rank among all Nobel Prize achievements?
A: Since 2 1 century, artemisinin-based compound drugs have become the mainstream drugs for malaria treatment. The World Health Organization released the report "Achieving the Millennium Development Goals on Malaria" in September, 20 15, in which it was mentioned that in 20 15, the current situation of human struggle against malaria was completely contrary to the pessimistic prediction at the beginning of the new millennium: compared with 2000, the number of new malaria infections in the world decreased by 37%, and the mortality rate decreased by 60%, which could be converted into saving 6.2 million.
Such a huge humanitarian achievement, in the language of the ancients, is not an exaggeration to call it "thousands of households give birth to Buddha." However, the technical means used in this achievement are basically conventional, and there is no new theory or new experimental method. Therefore, this is an isolated achievement, which is not as significant as discovering quantum mechanics or the double helix structure of DNA, for example. Of course, those foundations that belong to the human knowledge system are inherently unattainable. I'm just saying that the results of the Nobel Prize are of course very important, but if we have to divide them, the importance is also different.
The objects of comparison with artemisinin are probably penicillin discovered by Fleming, insulin discovered by Wanjin and sulfonamides discovered by Domagk. They are specific drugs for some important diseases and belong to medical achievements with great application value.
3. Q: What is the world's situation in fighting malaria?
A: In Tu Youyou's Nobel Prize speech, this issue was particularly emphasized. Although artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACTs) has made great achievements, there are still 3.3 billion people threatened by malaria in 97 countries and regions around the world, among whom 65.438+0.2 billion people live in high-risk areas, and the prevalence rate in these areas may be higher than 654.38+0/654.38+0.000. In 20 13 years, the number of malaria patients in the world was about1980 thousand, and the number of deaths caused by malaria was about 580 thousand, of which 78% were children under 5 years old. There are still as many as 56 million to 69 million malaria children who have not received artemisinin combination therapy.
What is even more worrying is that in some areas, Plasmodium falciparum has developed resistance to artemisinin. As far as I know, this is actually the inevitable result of evolution. Because drugs are equivalent to a natural selection of pathogens, those who can't resist drugs are killed, and those who have drug-resistant mutations survive, so the proportion of drug-resistant genes has expanded from generation to generation. Microbes have a short life cycle and rapid evolution, so this is a struggle that human beings are almost doomed to lose in the long run. Pharmacists, like Sisyphus in ancient Greek mythology, push stones up the mountain, and then the stones automatically roll down. This is a solemn and stirring job.
In fact, before artemisinin, humans had quinine, an important drug to treat malaria. However, plasmodium developed drug resistance after hundreds of years of competition with quinine drugs. Since the 1960s, falciparum malaria has made a comeback. During the Vietnam War, the number of American troops who died of falciparum malaria far exceeded the death toll.
Therefore, in 20 1 1 year, the World Health Organization formulated a global plan to curb artemisinin resistance. More than 65,438+000 experts participating in the program believe that the opportunity to contain or eliminate artemisinin resistance is actually very limited before it spreads to high infection areas. In his Nobel Prize speech, Tu Youyou called on antimalarial drug workers around the world to seriously implement the WHO plan, which shows that the task of curbing artemisinin resistance is imminent.
Q: What exactly is Tu Youyou's contribution?
A: In short, it proves the existence of specific antimalarial drugs.
They have done repeated screening in traditional Chinese medicine before, but no particularly effective drugs have been found. 197 1 September, Tu Youyou revisited ancient books and further thought about such a passage in Elbow Jifang by Ge Hong, a famous Taoist scholar in the Eastern Jin Dynasty: "Hold Artemisia annua, take two liters of water to dye it, and wring juice to take it." She thought that the effective components of Artemisia annua might need to be extracted at low temperature, and the previous extraction temperature was too high, which destroyed the effective components. Therefore, she decided to change the extraction solvent from ethanol to ether with low boiling point.
This change has brought miraculous effect. They found that the neutral extract of Artemisia annua ether inhibited malaria in mice and monkeys by 100%.
At that time, they participated in the national anti-malaria research code-named "Project 523". 1on March 8th, 972, Tu Youyou reported this result at the 523 project meeting, which caused a sensation. Since then, after more than ten years of cooperation and struggle, the effective components and their chemical structures have been determined, a large number of methods for preparing artemisinin have been discovered, clinical research has been completed, and quality standards have been established. 1986, the new drug was approved.
A brief summary of the work of the antimalarial drug research team of the Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine in that year, in which the blue background indicates the work completed by the team of the Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the white background indicates the work completed by other domestic cooperative teams, and the transition from the blue background to the white background indicates the work attended by both the Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine and the cooperative units (from the Tu Youyou Nobel Prize speech).
Q: Since artemisinin is the result of the collaboration of so many units and individuals, why did the Nobel Prize only go to Tu Youyou?
A: Because 0 to 1 is the most important breakthrough, which is much more important than 1 to 100.
Looking at the cooperation of so many units and individuals for more than ten years, laymen may be confused by a large number of terms and names, and then have an impression that every researcher is very important and it is impossible to judge whose contribution is more important. But this impression is wrong.
In fact, modern science rarely sees the work done by a single person (except mathematics). If you browse scientific journals, you will find that most papers have more than one author. And with the passage of time, the average number of authors of papers is increasing.
Artemisinin is a huge project from discovery to application, involving many professional fields. Obviously, it can't be done by one person or one institution, but it must be the result of the cooperation of many institutions.
However, all these efforts are based on the recognition that there is a specific antimalarial drug. None of this would have happened if Tu Youyou hadn't shown you this.
What we need to pay attention to is whether there are specific antimalarial drugs, which is by no means a problem that can be determined in advance. Logically, it may not exist at all. As you ask now, are there any specific drugs for cancer, AIDS and Alzheimer's disease? No one knows the answer, probably it doesn't exist.
As some readers pointed out: "Without individual breakthrough, the collective is doing nothing, and the American collective has done this in the antimalarial drug research and development competition." In fact, in the same period, the United States once focused on the Army Research Institute, invested a lot of manpower, material resources and financial resources, and screened more than 300,000 compounds, but found nothing.
Academician Zhang Boli, President of Chinese Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, accompanied Tu Youyou to Stockholm to receive the prize. He thinks: "Although artemisinin is the result of teamwork in a special period, Tu Youyou's contribution is a key discovery. For a long time in the past, we emphasized the collective and neglected the recognition of scientists' pioneering contributions. "