Nobel Prize for Chinese traditional medicine expert who developed malaria cure

Developed for Communist troops fighting in the Vietnam War, Tu Youyou's treatment was major breakthrough in global fight against malaria

Tu Youyou, right, working with Prof Lou Zhicen in the 1950s (Xinhua via AP)

A Chinese scientist who pioneered a malaria treatment for Communist troops fighting America in the Vietnam War has won the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

Tu Youyou spearheaded a secret programme set up by Chairman Mao to see if traditional Chinese herbal cures could reduce the number of North Vietnamese troops dying to malaria.

After sifting through thousands of different folk remedies, she finally unearthed a 1,600-year-old recipe using sweet wormwood that formed the basis for one of the most effective treatments ever discovered.

Under Mao's Cultural Revolution, which saw academics as part of the despised bourgeoisie, her name was kept anonymous for decades, and until recently, even colleagues had never heard of her.

Now, though, at the age of 84, she has finally taken her rightful place in world medical history, with the Nobel judges announcing on Monday that she would be a joint winner of this year's $960,000 award.

Pharmacologist Tu Youyou attends an award ceremony in Beijing in 2011 (Reuters)

The other two winners are Irish-born William Campbell and Japan's Satoshi Omura, who developed avermectin, derivatives of which are used to treat river blindness and elephantiasis.

• None of the top 10 predicted to win the Nobel Peace Prize are women
• The little-known priest giving the Pope a run for Nobel Peace Prize 
• Angela Merkel 'firm favourite' for Nobel prize over refugee crisis - but losing favour in Germany

“The two discoveries have provided humankind with powerful new means to combat these debilitating diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people annually,” the Nobel committee said. “The consequences in terms of improved human health and reduced suffering are immeasurable.” Ms Tu's work created the drug artemisinin, which now forms part of the mainstay of malaria treatment in Africa. Used in tandem with insecticide-impregnated bednets, it is credited with helping to halve malaria mortality rates worldwide in the last 15 years.

Yet for decades, its exact origins remained unknown - as did the remarkable story of its creator, which could easily form the script for a Hollywood movie.

It begins in 1969, when Ms Tu - then a mid-career scientist - was recruited to Chairman Mao’s top-secret Project 523. Its task was to investigate cures for malaria, which in the 1960s was developing resistance to existing drugs such as chloroquine.

An illustration describing Ms Tu's work displayed during the press conference announcing the winners of the Nobel Medicine Prize (AFP)

It was also taking a heavy toll on the armies of China's communist ally, North Vietnam, who were losing more soldiers to malaria in their jungle warfare against US troops than they were to American bombs or bullets.

At the time, the quest for an effective alternative to chloroquine had baffled the world's scientific community, which had tested some 240,000 different compounds without success.

It was then that Ms Tu, who had studied both Chinese and Western medicines, began reviewing some 2,000 ancient herbal recipes from the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Beijing.

One of them, written in a 1,600 year old text called "Emergency Prescriptions Kept Up One’s Sleeve”, recommended soaking sweet wormwood in water and then drinking the resulting juice.

Tried out first on mice and monkeys, it proved highly effective, although it then had to be tested to see if was harmful of humans. As head of the research group, Ms Tu volunteered to be the first test subject herself. Subsequent trials on labourers who had caught malaria while working in dense forests proved that it could banish malarial parasites from the bloodstream within just over a day.

While such a discovery might have won Ms Tu considerable fame in the West, in Maoist-era China, she gained no kudos at all. At the time, scientist and intellectuals were viewed with suspicion at best, with Ms Tu’s husband having been banished to the countryside, and the idea of an individual scientist claiming credit for a breakthrough sat uneasily with Maoist notions of collective endeavour. Tu was not even allowed to publish her findings until 1977, a year after Mao's death, and even then, her contribution remained anonymous.

News of her work only emerged in the West when Louis Miller, an American research scientist, met Chinese scientists in 2005 and chanced to ask who had discovered artemisinin. Intrigued at the blank stares that his question produced, he began investigatingin detail.

An illustration describing the research on roundworm infections by Nobel Medicine Prize winners (AFP)

Various official paperwork - much of it once secret - revealed it to be Ms Tu, who by then was living in a shabby apartment block in Beijing. At the time, she was known by colleagues as "The Professor of the Three Nos", since she had no post-graduate degree, was not a member of any national academy, and had no foreign research experience.

While Ms Tu received America’s top medical accolade, the Lasker award, in 2011, this is the first time that any expert in Chinese traditional medicine has been awarded a Nobel.

"This is indeed a glorious moment," said Li Chenjian, a vice provost at Peking University. "This also is an acknowledgement to the traditional Chinese medicine, for the work began with herbal medicine."

Artemisinin-based drugs are now routinely used by pharmaceuticals giants like Sanofi and Novartis in the fight against malaria, which still kills half a million people a year.

It is not yet clear whether the ageing Ms Tu will attend the Nobel annual award ceremony, which takes place on December 10. Each winner will also get a diploma and a gold medal.

AT A GLANCE

Nobel Prizes 2015

Pic: AP/Fernando Vergara

Nobel Prize for Medicine

Awarded jointly for discoveries that assisted the treatment of infections caused by roundworm parasites, and Malaria

• William C Campbell & Satoshi Omura
• Youyou Tu

Nobel Prize in Physics

Awarded jointly "for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass"

• Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald

Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Awarded jointly to three people for "mechanistic studies of DNA repair"

• Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar

Nobel Peace Prize

• To be announced 9 October

Prize for Economics Science

• To be announced 12 October

Nobel Prize in Literature

• Awarded to the Belarusian author Svetlana Alexievich

Related post:

Discovery of DNA Repair Methods Nails 2015 Chemistry Nobel Prize

Three scientists who found ways that cells fix damaged DNA—staving off cancer and other diseases—have won this year's prize There ...

TPPA a bad deal for Malaysia, can't isolate China, only trade growth defines merits of TPP

KUALA LUMPUR: United Nations assistant director-general and coordinator for economic and social development, food and agriculture organisation, Dr Jomo Kwame Sundaram (pix) has called on the government not to join the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) as it provides little benefit for Malaysia.



“I am extremely disappointed. I think it is going to affect, not only the Malaysian business community, but also Malaysian consumers and citizens adversely,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the Khazanah Megatrend Forum 2015 .

On Monday, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (Miti) said the recently concluded TPPA negotiations had agreed to take into consideration almost all of Malaysia’s concerns and sensitivities such as government procurement, state-owned enterprises and bumiputra issues.

The TPP is a trade agreement initiative involving 12 countries namely Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the US and Vietnam.

Miti said the TPPA will be presented to parliament once the complete and official text of the agreement is prepared.

Bloomberg reported that Malaysia’s state-owned enterprises may suffer from the deal, which calls for equal access to government procurement even though electronics, chemical products, palm oil and rubber exporters benefit from it.

Jomo said that the TPPA is politically motivated, in that it is an attempt by the US to try and isolate China, with minimum trade advantages for Malaysia.

“For example, if Malaysia produces solar panels it can’t be sold in the US and elsewhere. These are all contravening the bilateral agreements. You cannot expect the TPPA to overcome that,” he explained.

On intellectual property rights, Jomo said that the most significant implication is the cost of medication.

“They have exclusive rights and have been depriving people from the benefits of this. This is scandalous and inhumane, it cannot explain why Malaysia agreed to this,” he said.

In a statement late on Monday however, Miti had reiterated that the TPPA should not hinder the public’s access to affordable drugs and healthcare, while ensuring the necessary incentives for pharmaceutical innovators to produce new drugs and medicines.

Even though there will be “small” benefits, Jomo said the government should look at it as a whole, especially from the cost perspective.

He also said foreign complainants will have more legal resources for dispute settlement through new arbitration panels compared with those from developing countries.

“Even in the negotiations, they (developing countries) are not very well prepared, and everyone knows most of the developing countries just accepted what was given to them. It was the developed countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Japan that were insisting on it and the US compromised to them,” he added.

Meanwhile, Miti secretary-general Tan Sri Rebecca Fatima Sta Maria stressed that the full text of the TPPA will be made available to the public soon.

“We’ve nothing to hide, at the end of the day, the important thing is we want to be sure this works for Malaysia,” she said.

She does not foresee the TPPA taking effect in the next two years considering it has to be approved by every participating country

“ It will be a long process, maybe two years or more, I don’t know,” she added.

A cost benefit analysis commissioned by Miti to determine the attractiveness of the deal is yet to be completed.

TPPA cost benefit analysis still pending

Should have been finalised earlier for the sake of public understanding



PETALING JAYA: The cost benefit analysis on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) should have been finalised and released earlier for the sake of public understanding, Bantah TPPA group chairman Mohd Nizam Mahshar said in a statement yesterday.

Commenting on the conclusion of the TPPA negotiations, he said the cost benefit analysis should have been finalised and released earlier, to provide the public and interested parties with a greater understanding of the TPPA and its implications.

The release of the cost benefit analysis has been delayed for months.

“Until now, it has not been released and we only have three months from the official date of the negotiation’s conclusion to the date that it has to be signed,” he added.

International Trade and Industry Minister, Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed said in a Facebook posting yesterday that the contents of the TPPA deal will be made public next month and presented to parliament for debate within the next two months.

The minister said it would also include the completed cost benefit analysis.

“This does not mean a thing. Even though debated by parliamentarians, the agreement cannot be amended,” Mohd Nizam said. “From this day to the next 90 days Malaysia has only two choices, either to take the TPPA agreement as a whole or to reject it completely. We still have a say if we choose to speak up,” he added.

Nizam said despite the conclusion of the negotiations, the group is maintaining its position that the TPPA deal will not benefit the country’s trade or economic health.

He said the possible impact includes restrictions of policy space, intrusions on legal and political sovereignty, huge impact to small and medium enterprises and infant industry, access to affordable medicine, as well as intellectual property effects to knowledge and information institutions and industries.

Meanwhile, the recently formed coalition party Parti Amanah Negara said it hoped all comments from the public will be considered seriously.

“We also hope all necessary action will be taken and the debate will not merely be an exercise in ‘public relations’,” its communication director Khalid Abd Samad said in a statement.

He added that the minister previously had acknowledged that there were several concerns regarding the TPPA, saying among the concerns in the agreement is that it seeks to ensure free competition with minimal government control or intervention.

“This will only result in stronger companies overcoming all others and dominating the market,” Khalid said, explaining that local companies, which are much smaller than the United States multinational companies and other member countries will not be able to compete and therefore become sidelined.

Commenting on the intellectual property rights issue, Khalid said it would have a direct impact specifically on the price of medicine, and enforcement of intellectual property rights would cause higher prices of medicine.

“Even though this may be good for the pharmaceutical companies, it will certainly have a negative effect on the population as a whole,” Khalid added, saying that the party is worried that the deal will only bring short-term benefits, while increasing the country’s dependency on specific sources of revenue.

Meanwhile, Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute’s Centre for public policy studies chairman Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam said the Ministry of International Trade and Industry should hold several town hall meetings to explain the TPPA deal to the public.

“We cannot afford to leave important national agreements and treaties only to politicians to decide, as they may have their own political deals to settle. We all have to actively participate in the debate outside parliament as well,” he added. - The Sunbiz

TPP cannot ‘isolate China’ - Chinese economy increasingly open, inclusive: economist

The US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement will not isolate China or seriously hurt the Chinese economy, experts said Wednesday, adding it could lead the world's second-largest economy to reach similar deals with other nations, after a deal was reached on the TPP earlier this week.

Amid widespread online pessimism over the trade pact among 12 Pacific Rim nations that some believe deliberately excluded China, Chinese economists said such anxieties have been overblown.

Huang Wei, director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the TPP will affect China, but will have a "minimal negative impact" on the Chinese economy in the long run because of the economy's size and its irreplaceable role in regional and global markets.

Huang believes the TPP creates more of a "psychological effect" on China that the country has been left out by its neighbors and trading partners from such a significant trade agreement. "But don't turn pale just at the mention of a tiger," she told the Global Times on Wednesday.

She said, if anything, the trade accord will push China to further engage with regional and global economies and pursue more trade agreements with countries in Asia and around the world, which will help the Chinese economy grow and better compete globally.

Chen Fengying, an expert at the Institute of World Economics Studies under the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, also believes that the TPP will not isolate China from the regional economy and could even be beneficial.

"Given the important role China plays in regional and global economics, a single agreement won't isolate China," Chen told the Global Times Wednesday. She added that if the TPP can help build a more open and prosperous Asia, it will be conducive for the Chinese economy.

Both Huang and Chen's comments come after trade ministers from the US, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Australia, and New Zealand reached a deal.

After days of negotiations on the details of the deal in Atlanta, US officials announced Monday that an agreement had been reached, ending years of talks, though the deal still needs to go through the legislative process of each country before it can be signed and implemented.

Prevailing issues

Some posts on popular social media platforms in China suggested Wednesday that China's own issues in areas such as intellectual property protection, environmental standards and currency policies prevented it from being included in the deal, while others said the US is trying to single out China and counter China because the US feels its economic and political dominance is being threatened.

Experts said understanding the TPP's impact should not only be based on the "US conspiracy theory" or the "China-deserves-it" angle.

Zhang Jianping, a foreign trade expert at the National Development and Reform Commission, told the Economic Daily that China lags behind in meeting the TPP's requirements, such as environmental, finance and labor standards. It will take a long time for China to reach those standards, and that is why China held back in joining the TPP, he said.

Chen also said that intellectual property protection, environmental standards and other factors might have been reasons why China did not sit at the negotiating table, but such a move has pushed China to improve in such areas, as it holds numerous trade talks with countries in Asia and beyond, including TPP member-nations.

China engages world

China has reached separate free trade agreements with Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Peru, and Singapore, who are also involved in the TPP, while continuing talks with the US, Japan and other countries on free-trade deals.

China is also engaged in regional multilateral trade talks, such as the Free-Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) with Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia.

All these efforts and other projects such as the "Belt and Road" initiative and the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) show the Chinese economy is moving toward being more open and inclusive, Chen said. It will help the country to maintain its increasing influence over regional and global trade, she added.

Chen also said she believes these trade deals are not mutually exclusive, saying they can complement each other by building a more open and fair regional economy in the Asia-Pacific.

China's Ministry of Commerce said Tuesday that China is open to any trade agreement "compatible" with rules established by the World Trade Organization, and that is conducive to the regional economic integration of the Asia-Pacific region.- Global Times

Only trade growth will define merits of TPP


Labourers work at a garment factory in Sai Dong, outside Hanoi, Vietnam. [Photo/Agencies]

At a critical moment when trade is set to grow less than the global economy for the first time in the last four decades, there is no reason not to welcome the ambitious pact that 12 Pacific Rim countries reached on Monday to create the largest free trade area of the world.

That is why China's Ministry of Commerce said on Tuesday that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is one of the key free trade agreements for the region and China is open to any mechanism that follows the rules of the World Trade Organization and can boost the economic integration of the Asia-Pacific.

As a top global trading power that has hugely contributed to and benefited from the global trade growth for the last two decades, China sincerely hopes the TPP pact and other free trade arrangements in the region can strengthen each other and boost trade, investment and economic growth in the Asia-Pacific, to benefit not just the region but also the rest of the world.

It is also the common wish of the international community that, as a long-term driving force, the current slow pace of global trade growth should be revived through deeper and wider reforms of the international trade system to fuel a sustainable global recovery from the 2008 financial crisis.

The appealing promise that the TPP may reshape industries and liberalize commerce in 40 percent of the world's economy has understandably given rise to praise such as the "most ambitious trade pact in a generation".

Yet the real implications of the TPP deal are far from clear since it has been largely negotiated under a blanket of secrecy to facilitate give-and-take among the signatories.

The power of a successful trade deal is to maximize as much as possible each participant's comparative advantages in global trade while minimizing predictable political opposition from various domestic vested interests.

Nevertheless, even before the five-year marathon talks have secured a really workable arrangement, US President Barack Obama hastened to paint the pact as a way of stopping China from writing the rules of the global economy in an illusion that he may easily win over the domestic political support he expects.

However, if the deal is based on the political priority of one partner, rather than the shared benefit of all partners, it would be hard to believe that it can ensure free market trade as it is being touted.

The world needs a trade-boosting deal. The United States has a huge onus to prove the merits of the TPP.  - China Daily