Reflections on the ‘discovery’ of the antimalarial qinghao

Abstract

Artemisinin, qinghaosu, was extracted from the traditional Chinese medical drug qinghao (the blue‐green herb) in the early 1970s. Its ‘discovery’ can thus be hailed as an achievement of research groups who were paradoxically successful, working as they were at the height of a political mass movement in communist China, known in the West as the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), a period that was marked by chaos, cruelty and enormous suffering, particularly, but by no means only, among the intelligentsia. On the one hand, China’s cultural heritage was seen as a hindrance to progress and Mao set out to destroy it, but on the other hand he praised it as a ‘treasure house’, full of gems that, if adjusted to the demands of contemporary society, could be used ‘for serving the people’ (wei renmin fuwu). The success of the ‘task of combating malaria’ (kang nüe ren wu), sometimes known as ‘task number five hundred and twenty‐three’, depended crucially on modern scientists who took seriously knowledge that was recorded in a traditional Chinese medical text, Emergency Prescriptions Kept up one’s Sleeve by the famous physician Ge Hong (284–363).

From branch to bedside: Youyou Tu is awarded the 2011 Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for discovering artemisinin as a treatment for malaria

“…"Another recipe: qinghao, one bunch, take two sheng [2.2 liters] of water for soaking it, wring it out, take the juice, ingest it in its entirety" (9). This triggered a new idea: the heating involved in the conventional extraction step might have destroyed the active components, and lower temperatures during the extraction process might be necessary to preserve its activity.…”

“…The institute where Tu was working employed not only traditional Chinese practitioners and historians, but also chemists, pharmacologists, and other medical doctors. Tu's workplace was a unique setup specific to institutions in China where scientists worked side by side with historians (9). The covert nature of the project created a milieu in which few scientific papers were published, with the earliest ones inaccessible outside of China.…”

“…The earliest written record of qinghao use, written on a piece of silk unearthed from the Mawangdui Han Dynasty tombs (168 BCE), described its use as a treatment for hemorrhoids. Another ancient text, Compendium of Materia Medica by Li Shizhen (1518-1593) during the Ming Dynasty, specifically described qinghao as a remedy for fever (9).…”

Der Medizinnobelpreis 2015 - Auswirkungen auf die Phytopharmazie?

“…Dahinter steckt aber eine eher langwierige Vorgeschichte der westlichen Ignoranz gegenüber der bahnbrechenden Therapie aus der fernöstlichen traditionellen Medizin, wie ich schon nach kurzer Recherche feststellen konnte. Der Ursprung der Entdeckung in der Zeit von 1969 bis 1972 lag im Studium von über 600 TCM-Rezepturen im Rahmen eines nationalen chinesischen Projekts zur Entwicklung von hochwirksamen Malariamedikamenten ohne Resistenzen in den Jahren der Kulturrevolution und des Vietnamkriegs [6,7]. Darunter fand Tu, gemäss einer GEO -Reportage aus dem Jahr 2005, den Hinweis auf Qinghao, das 168 v. Chr.…”

The rise to prominence of Artemisia annual the transformation of a Chinese plant to a global pharmaceutical

“…The transformation of the plant to a highly demanded commodity was part of a complex historical process that began with the systematic screening of the Chinese materia medica to discover new drugs with antimalarial property. In 1972, the plant constituent artemisinin was isolated and subsequently identified as a sesquiterpene-lactone found to be effective against malarial parasites (Klayman, 1985;Bökemeier, 2006;Hsu, 2006a). Since then, the chemistry of the compound, the pharmacology, and the clinical applications of artemisinin and its synthetic derivates have been widely explored and analysed (Bilia et al, 2002).…”