In a telephone interview, Chen told Epoch Times that Tu Youyou winning the Nobel left the Chinese authorities in an awkward position because she is not part of a system they endorse and promote-Tu is not an academician, derived her research not from Chinese science but from traditional Chinese medicine, and is practically a “nobody” from the people and not society’s elite. They affect millions of people in Africa, Latin America and Asia, leaving sufferers blind or disfigured and often unable to work. “The consequences in terms of improved human health and reduced suffering are immeasurable”.
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The Carter Center called the three laureates “heroes in the truest sense of the word, saving lives through medicine”.
William Campbell from Drew University in Madison, U.S. acquired Ōmura’s Streptomyces cultures and explored their efficacy.
However, the real test for the companies in the long run would be their ability to attract worldwide orders on their own, as most of these companies are raw material suppliers to multinational drugmakers such as Novartis AG. He said the award came as a “huge surprise”.
Omura is a professor emeritus at Kitasato University, specializing in pharmaceutical development occurring from microorganisms. He wondered whether he deserved the prize.
The Nobel committee said the trio’s work “has provided fundamental knowledge of how a living cell functions”.
Omura said the crucial strain was found in a soil sample from a golf course near Tokyo. The bioactive agent was purified and named Avermectin, which was subsequently chemically modified to a more effective compound called Ivermectin.
Ivermectin has been successful in almost eradicating river blindness and lymphatic filariasis.
Together, the scientists have transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the developing world, where parasitic diseases that cause illness and death are most rife. River blindness, or Onchocerciasis, ultimately leads to blindness due to chronic inflammation in the cornea.
“But when a scientist wins a Nobel prize… all anyone can think about is the honor for the motherland and the brilliance fostered by the embrace of the [ruling Chinese Communist] Party”, the user wrote. Yet Mao saw the value of researching anti-Malarial drugs, at a time when his allies in North Vietnam were struggling with illness. However, domestic anti-malaria drug suppliers will need lots of efforts to gain global orders, said a research report from Haitong Securities Co Ltd. The mosquito-borne disease malaria kills more than 450,000 people each year around the world, with billions more at risk of catching the infection. The treatments wiped out the parasites in both. The job was left to Chinese medicine researcher Zhou Weishan, who was not the original choice but accepted the job after two other scientists were too busy on other assigned projects. For decades, China has yearned for the worldwide recognition that a Nobel Prize confers. Dr Tu, who is the first Chinese national to receive a Nobel Prize for science, made the breakthrough in the 1970s, at the height of China’s Cultural Revolution, but her role in the fight against malaria remained little known until just a few years ago.
Speaking to the state news agency, Liu Qingquan, the president of the Beijing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, praised the value of local wisdom and traditional medicine.
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Stephen Ward, deputy director of Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, said the prize confirms that Chinese scientists “did fantastic work in the 1960s even when they were effectively ignored by the rest of the world”. The winners of the physics, chemistry and peace prizes are set to be announced later this week.
