The Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine has announced the recipients of the 2015 award. The judges in Stockholm awarded the prize to William C Campbell, Satoshi Ōmura and Youyou Tu – the first ever Chinese medicine laureate.

Satoshi Omura is a Japanese biochemist. He made his discovery after collecting soil samples from around Japan and isolating bacteria called Streptomyces. One of them was Streptomyces avermitilis, which became the source for the drug avermectin.

Ōmura’s work was taken up by William C Campbell, who showed that Streptomyces avermitilis was remarkably effective at killing off parasites in domestic and farm animals. The compound responsible, avermectin, was modified into a more effective substance called ivermectin. When tested in humans, the compound was found to have killed off parasite larvae.

Youyou Tu is a Chinese medical scientist, pharmaceutical chemist, and educator best known for discovering artemisinin (also known as Qinghaosu) and dihydroartemisinin, used to treat malaria. At present, she is working at the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine. She is the 12th woman to win the medicine prize – shortly after she won the Lasker prize in 2011.

The medicine award was the first Nobel prize to be announced. The winners of the physics, chemistry and peace prizes are set to be announced later this week. The economics prize will be announced next Monday. No date has been set yet for the literature prize.

What is  artemisinin?

artemisinin derivatives are a group of drugs that possess the most rapid action of all current drugs against Plasmodium falciparum malaria.

Facts About Malaria:

• Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals belonging to the genus Plasmodium
• Symptom:
  •  fever,
  • fatigue,
  • vomiting
  • headache
• The disease is transmitted most commonly by an infected female Anopheles mosquito.
• Every year, 3.2 billion people are at risk of malaria.
• In 2013, 90% of the world’s malaria deaths occurred in Africa and over 430 000 African children died before their fifth birthdays.

Test Your Knowledge

In which year was Noble Prize first awarded?