This year's Nobel winners in medicine have one thing in common: they all worked against parasitic diseases.
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institute announced on Monday, Oct 5, that it's awarding the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine to William Campbell and Satoshi Omura, for their work against roundworm parasites, and Youyou Tu against malaria.
Campbell of the United States and Omura of Japan created avermectin, from which ivermectin is based. Ivermectin is now being used to treat river blindness and is part of World Health Organization's (WHO) List of Essential Medicines.
Also known as onchocerciasis, river blindness is caused by a worm called Onchocerca volvulus, which can be transmitted to humans through a bite from a blackfly, which is usually found in rivers and streams. According to WHO, it can result to intense itching of the skin and lesions to the eyes, which may then lead to blindness. Around 90% of the reported cases are found in Africa.
In 1978, along with Merck Institute, Omura was able to isolate the Streptomyces avermitilis bacterium using the samples of soil he collected around Japan. Campbell then purified the bacterial culture to develop avermectin.
Tu of China, on the other hand, relied on her self-will to fight malaria and her heritage to develop artemisinin. She based her study on an ancient herbal book, which suggested that sweet wormwood could improve the symptoms of malaria, a parasitic disease caused by at least four different species. It is transmitted to humans through an Anopheles mosquito bite. In 2013, at least 500,000 children died of the disease, most of whom lived in the African regions, according to WHO.
Tu used sweet wormwood to extract the active compound, which is then the basis for artemisinin. Her first subject was herself as she could not conduct a clinical trial due to the political climate of her time.
The drug is now proven to be potent against the early development of the parasite and has saved at least 100,000 people every year in Africa.
