Scientists share Nobel Prize for medicine for work on parasitic diseases

Irish-born William Campbell, Satoshi Omura of Japan and China’s Youyou Tu won the Nobel Medicine Prize on Monday for their discoveries of treatments against parasites, the jury said.

Campbell and Omura won it for their novel therapy for infections caused by roundworm parasites.

Campbell and Omura were cited for discovering a drug that has helped lower the incidence of river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, two diseases caused by parasitic worms. She discovered the drug Artemisinin that significantly reduced the mortality rates of patients suffering from Malaria.

The Nobel committee said the work had changed the lives of the hundreds of millions of people affected by these diseases.

“Parasitic diseases affect the world’s poorest populations and represent a huge barrier to improving human health and wellbeing”, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet said Monday.

Medicine is the first of the Nobel prizes awarded each year.

The winners of the physics, chemistry and peace prizes are to be announced later this week. Finally, on October 12, the Nobel economic laureate will complete the 2015 set of prizes. The literature prize doesn’t yet have an announcement date but is expected on Thursday.

The winners will share the 8 million Swedish Kronor (€854,452) prize money.