: A scientist tasked with the mission turned to ancient medical texts. She discovered a reference to "sweet wormwood" ( Artemisia annua ) being used to treat fever in 340 AD.
: To prove it was safe, Tu volunteered to be the first human subject to take the drug. Her discovery eventually earned her the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2015. 3. The Shadow of Side Effects
: Isolated in 1820 by French chemists, this "Jesuit's powder" became the first world-standard treatment. antimalarial drug
Long before laboratories existed, the story began in the Andean forests of South America with the . Legend has it that an indigenous Peruvian man, suffering from a high fever, drank from a pool of bitter water where a Cinchona trunk had fallen—and his fever broke.
: After many failures, Tu realized that high-heat extraction was destroying the active ingredient. She used a low-temperature method to isolate Artemisinin . : A scientist tasked with the mission turned
The race for new drugs hasn't been without controversy. (Lariam), developed by the US Army in the 1970s, was a powerful long-acting drug. However, it became notorious for severe neuropsychiatric side effects, including:
: Quinine is still used today for severe malaria, nearly 400 years after its first documented use. 2. The Secret Mission: Project 523 Her discovery eventually earned her the Nobel Prize
During the 1960s, as malaria took a heavy toll on soldiers during the Vietnam War, standard drugs like chloroquine began to fail. In China, a secret military project named was launched to find a new cure.