More details about the 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine: When the East and West Medicine combined

This year's Nobel Prize for Medicine has been awarded to three scientists by finding the parasite-killing drug, promising to be an important "weapon" in the fight against disease. However, this substance is not completely created in the laboratory, but one is produced naturally by bacteria, the other comes from the herb that the Chinese used more than 1,000 years ago.

Learn more about the 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine

William C. Campbellm, emeritus professor of Drew and Satoshi Ōmura University, an emeritus professor of Kitasato University discovered avermectins, thereby developing into a drug that significantly reduces the incidence of River Blindness (Onchocerciasis). , also known as filariasis . The other person shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2015, the female professor Youyou Tu came from the Chinese Institute of Traditional Medicine, who found artemisinin - a drug that helps reduce the incidence of malaria.

Avermectins - bacteria that kill worms, kill invertebrates, do not harm humans and birds

Two researchers Ōmura and Campbell discovered avermectins in a study from the 1970s to find effective drugs to treat parasites.

Streptomyces avermitilis is capable of producing avermectin - a parasiticide.

At that time, Professor uramura's job was to collect, cultivate and classify bacteria in the soil belonging to the genus Streptomyces. Many of them are known to produce antimicrobial substances, such as streptomycin. After culturing through thousands of different batches of bacteria, he sent about 50 species to send to Professor Campbell to test on parasitic roundworms in mice.

Among them, a batch contains a bacterium called Streptomyces avermitilis , collected from a Japanese golf course, that can kill worms but does not affect mouse health. Next, scientists continue to refine a more pure chemical called avermectin B1 and refine it to form the final version of the drug, ivermectin, with the ability to kill not only worms but also many types of insects. including spiders, worms, . which have very few side effects for mammals or birds.

How does it work? Ivermectin is only effective for invertebrates that do not affect vertebrates. The nature here is because only the cells of the invertebrate animals appear as dielectric proteins. At that time, ivermectin will bind to proteins in invertebrates, thereby disrupting nerve function, preventing muscle spasms and paralyzing parasites.

Ivermectin is particularly effective against parasitic larvae - which are able to move in the host's body to find the point where the next host can be found. In the case of African river blindness, the 'migration' of parasitic larvae can cause skin damage, extreme itching, inflammation and if they pass through the eye, it will create scars on the cornea. and finally blind.

However, just one dose of ivermectin will kill the larvae before harming the human body. And because adult tissue regeneration also uses similar electrophoresis proteins, ivermectin can make this process longer. On the other hand, regular treatment with ivermectin can prevent new infections of the parasite and thus lead to the complete elimination of river blindness in the future.

Artemisinin - a drug that kills parasitic malaria derived from traditional herbs

Thanh hao hoa vang - a species of plant extracted into artemisinin to kill malaria parasites.

Malaria is an extremely uncomfortable disease that can endanger human life. 5 species of parasites of the genus Plasmodium can cause malaria and about half a million people die each year, mainly children due to malaria. At the same time, this parasite also continuously develops resistance to drugs, making prevention very complicated.

Since the 1960s, Professor Tu has begun to develop a new therapy to treat malaria, fighting off resistant strains of parasites. She uses an approach called ethnobotanical , experimenting with herbal plants that were used in traditional Chinese medicine to determine what drugs are actually effective. Most have no effect! However, she eventually found a seemingly promising plant : Thanh hao hoa vang (Artemesia annua, also called wormwood, wormwood) sometimes eradicates Plasmodium, but sometimes cannot.

Finally, Professor Tu found a remedy from 340 BC and said that it was possible that the high-temperature medicine used by the ancients could have destroyed the active ingredients in the drug. At that time, she tried using a method of extracting chemicals at lower temperatures and found that it was effective in killing malaria parasites in rats and monkeys.

An ancient remedy from 340 BC helped Professor Tu develop a medicine to kill malaria parasites.

After further refining and testing individual drug molecules (named artemisinin), she determined that it could be used to safely kill human parasites. However, due to some objective conditions, at that time she could not establish safety tests on people. And for research, Professor Tu and his colleagues used their own bodies to try the medicine.

Currently, people have not announced the body of artemisinin. It may have killed the malaria parasite at the beginning of its life cycle, thereby rapidly reducing the number of parasites inside the patient's blood. By combining artemisinin with other antimalarial drugs, doctors can kill parasites, helping to reduce the mortality rate of malaria patients to nearly half between 2000 and 2013.

These two achievements truly deserve to be honored with the Nobel Prize, which helps save countless lives in the world. However, the parasite will still evolve to resist drug, ivermectin and artemisinin, which will become useless and require the relentless efforts of future researchers to protect people.