Behind The Discovery Of Artemisinin: Saving Millions of Lives With Anti-Malarials Today

Watch Youyou Tu on NobelPrize's Facebook Page

Artemisinin based combination therapies (ACTs) have become the front line drugs for treatment of malaria after the phasing out of chloroquine and the other monotherapeutics due to resistance mounted by the Plasmodium parasites. 

But how much do we know about the discovery of the drug(s) that have changed the face of the malaria world, salvaging many lives.

With resistance to artemisinin mounting in South East Asia, and showing trace signatures in Africa, it is obvious that novel strategies are required to keep the malaria disease in check until subsequent elimination. This would also be in honor of the 2015 Nobel Prize Laureate in Physiology and Medicine, Youyou Tu.

Cell-Cell Teleportation: Real? A concern in malaria research? Is our definition of 'The Cell' on the line?

Networks of nanotubes may allow cells to share everything from infections and cancer to dementia-linked proteins.

"Nonetheless, there has been a recent rash of interest in the tubes. One of the believers is George Okafo, a director of emerging platforms at the drug company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in Stevenage, UK. He thinks that cell-to-cell protrusions could explain why diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and malaria, as well as HIV and prion infections, are so difficult to treat..."  

Monya Baker, How the Internet of cells has biologists buzzing. N

ature, 20 September 2017