Extract medicine from wormwood to cure malaria

THX reported that the Max Planck Research Association said on January 17 that researchers in Germany have found a cost-effective and cost-effective way to synthesize antimalarial drugs from excess materials.

Currently, nearly 1 million people around the world die every year by malaria due to lack of effective treatment, because sweet wormwood is used to extract artemisinin, a special treatment for malaria, only in Vietnam. South, China and some other countries.

However, researchers in Germany have now developed a simple artemisinin synthesis process in the laboratory, using artemisinin acid , a substance found in byproducts, or excess material in the process of extracting artemisinin from plants. wormwood, as a raw material for artemisinin synthesis.

Mr. Peter Seeberger, Director at Max Planck, confirmed this new process, the production of anti-malaria drugs will no longer depend on the extraction of active ingredients from plants.

Artemisinin acid in excess material has a mass of 10 times its active ingredient and they can be converted into artemisinin within 4.5 minutes in what is called continuous flow reactor (continuous -flow reactor).

Mr. Seeberger estimates that 800 such reactors will be sufficient to meet the world demand for artemisinin and that the entire synthesis process could be ready for technical use within 3-6 months. .