Millions of the world’s poorest saved by Nobel winners

Inc., of ivermectin, which is taken by 300 million people annually for treatment of the roundworm parasite that causes the two diseases.

With their discovery, Kajita and McDonald helped prove that neutrinos must have mass, thereby changing “our understanding of the innermost workings of matter”, the Nobel committee said.

Campbell and Satoshi Omura developed an innovative new drug called Avermectin. They tend to be prevalent in tropical regions and developing countries, like sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia and Central America. “Artemisinin represents a new class of antimalarial agents that rapidly kill the malaria parasites at an early stage of their development, which explains its unprecedented potency in the treatment of severe malaria“.

The Nobel Committee on Monday announced that three scientists have been chosen for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their exceptional discovery in the field of therapies for treatment of deadly parasites. “When used in combination therapy, it is estimated to reduce mortality from malaria by more than 20 percent overall and by more than 30 percent in children”, the Nobel Assembly notes.

Diseases caused by parasites constitute a major global health problem and have plagued humankind for millennia.

The jury selecting the winners for the Nobel Prize in medicine says the 2015 prize doesn’t reward traditional medicine, but individuals inspired by such practices.

Tu is the chief professor at the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

On Monday it also earned its Chinese developer, Tu Youyou, a Nobel Medicine Prize.

The efficacy of the bacteria was then tested by William Campbell.

Tu recalled the painstaking discovery of the therapy as she and her team extracted the effective elements from sweet wormwood after more than 190 attempts.

Satoshi Ōmura (Japan) and Youyou Tu (China). The tiny organisms are known to cause deformities, elephantiasis and river blindness in humans.

In an exclusive interview with Xinhua in the Nigerian capital Abuja, the expert described Tu as “a very renowned, hardworking woman who has done a number of researches, including a research on schistosomiasis, and got a breakthrough on a few of the drugs that are being used now”. From 1957-1990 he worked at the Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research. “It is of great significance for the fight against malaria and other infectious diseases, and for protecting the health of the world’s people”, Tu said.

Professor Campbell is the third Trinity graduate to have been awarded a Nobel Prize, joining physicist E.T.S. Walton who won the Nobel Prize for splitting the atom, and Samuel Beckett for his contribution to literature. “The resulting benefit to mankind [of the treatments] is immeasurable”, Forssberg said at a news conference in Stockholm where the prizes were announced.