My [first] name, Youyou, was given by my father, who adapted it from the sentence ‘呦呦鹿鸣, 食野之蒿'[5] translated as 'Deer bleat "youyou" while they are eating the wild Hao’ in the Chinese Book of Odes. How this links my whole life with qinghao will probably remain an interesting coincidence forever.
She attended Xiaoshi Middle School for junior high school and the first year of high school, before transferring to Ningbo Middle School in 1948. A tuberculosis infection interrupted her high-school education, but inspired her to go into medical research.[7] From 1951 to 1955, she attended Peking University Medical School / Beijing Medical College.[note 2] In 1955, Youyou Tu graduated from Beijing Medical University School of Pharmacy and continued her research on Chinese herbal medicine in the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences. Tu studied at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and graduated in 1955. Later Tu was trained for two and a half years in traditional Chinese medicine.
After graduation, Tu worked at the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine (now the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medical Sciences[note 1]) in Beijing.
Research career
Tu carried on her work in the 1960s and 70s, including during China's Cultural Revolution.
In 1967, during the Vietnam War, President Ho Chi Minh of North Vietnam asked Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai for help in developing a malaria treatment for his soldiers trooping down the Ho Chi Minh trail, where a majority came down with a form of malaria which is resistant to chloroquine. Because malaria was also a major cause of death in China's southern provinces, especially Guangdong and Guangxi, Zhou Enlai convinced Mao Zedong to set up a secret drug discovery project named Project 523 after its starting date, 23May 1967.[9]
In early 1969, Tu was appointed head of the Project 523 research group at her institute. Tu was initially sent to Hainan, where she studied patients who had been infected with the disease.[10]
Scientists worldwide had screened over 240,000 compounds without success.[11] In 1969, Tu, then 39 years old, had an idea of screening Chinese herbs. She first investigated the Chinese medical classics in history, visiting practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine all over the country on her own. She gathered her findings in a notebook called A Collection of Single Practical Prescriptions for Anti-Malaria. Her notebook summarized 640 prescriptions. By 1971, her team had screened over 2,000 traditional Chinese recipes and made 380 herbal extracts, from some 200 herbs, which were tested on mice.[9]
One compound was effective, sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua), which was used for "intermittent fevers," a hallmark of malaria. As Tu also presented at the project seminar, its preparation was described in a 1,600-year-old text, in a recipe titled, "Emergency Prescriptions Kept Up One's Sleeve". At first, it was ineffective because they extracted it with traditional boiling water. Tu discovered that a low-temperature extraction process could be used to isolate an effective antimalarial substance from the plant;[12] Tu says she was influenced by a traditional Chinese herbal medicine source, The Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergency Treatments, written in 340 by Ge Hong, which states that this herb should be steeped in cold water.[13] This book instructed the reader to immerse a handful of qinghao in the equivalent of 0.4 litres of water, wring out the juice, and drink it all.[3] After rereading the recipe, Tu realised the hot water had already damaged the active ingredient in the plant; therefore she proposed a method using low-temperature ether to extract the effective compound instead. Animal tests showed it was completely effective in mice and monkeys.[9]
In 1972, she and her colleagues obtained the pure substance and named it qinghaosu (青蒿素), or artemisinin in English.[12][14][15] This substance has now saved millions of lives, especially in the developing world.[16] Tu also studied the chemical structure and pharmacology of artemisinin.[12] Tu's group first determined the chemical structure of artemisinin. In 1973, Tu was attempting to confirm the carbonyl group in the artemisinin molecule when she accidentally synthesized dihydroartemisinin.
Tu volunteered to be the first human test subject. "As head of this research group, I had the responsibility" she said. It was safe, so she conducted successful clinical trials with human patients. Her work was published anonymously in 1977.[9] In 1981, she presented the findings related to artemisinin at a meeting with the World Health Organization.[17][18]
For her work on malaria, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine on 5 October 2015.
Later career
Tu Youyou was promoted to Researcher (研究员, the highest researcher rank in mainland China equivalent to the academic rank of a full professor) in 1980, shortly after the beginning of the Chinese economic reform in 1978. In 2001, she was promoted to academic advisor for doctoral candidates. As of 2023, she is the chief scientist of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences.[19]
Before 2011, Tu Youyou had been obscure for decades, and is described as "almost completely forgotten by people".[20]
Tu is regarded as the "Three-Without Scientist"[21] – no postgraduate degree (there was no postgraduate education then in China), no study or research experience abroad, and not a member of either of the Chinese national academies, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering.[22] Tu is now regarded as a representative figure of the first generation of Chinese medical workers since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949.[23]
Awards and honours
1978, National Science Congress Prize, P.R. China[24]
1979, National Inventor's Prize, P.R. China
1992, (One of the) Ten Science and Technology Achievements in China, State Science Commission, P.R. China[24]
1997, (Two of the) Ten Great Public Health Achievements in New China, P.R. China[24]
2009, Cyrus Tang Traditional Chinese Medicine Award winner
September 2011, GlaxoSmithKline Outstanding Achievement Award in Life Science[25]
October 2015, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2015 (co-recipient) for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against malaria, awarded one half of this prize; and William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura jointly awarded another half for their discoveries concerning a novel therapy against infection with roundworm parasites.[30]
^ abThe Beijing-based Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine (中医研究院) was established in 1955 and renamed the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine (中国中医研究院) in 1985 and then the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medical Sciences (中国中医科学院) in 2005. Tu Youyou has been working at the Academy since 1955. The Academy was subsidiary to the Ministry of Health and is now directly under the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
^ abPeking University Medical School (北京大学医学院) became the independent Beijing Medical College (北京医学院) in 1952. Tu Youyou attended it between 1951 and 1955. Later in 1985 it was renamed Beijing Medical University (北京医科大学), and was returned to Peking University as Peking University Health Science Center (北京大学医学部) since 2005.[2]
^Tu, Youyou. "Acceptance remarks by Tu Youyou". Lasker–DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award. New York: Lasker Foundation. Equipped with a sound knowledge in both traditional Chinese medicine and modern pharmaceutical sciences, my team inherited and developed the essence of traditional Chinese medicine using modern science and technology and eventually, we successfully accomplished the discovery and development of qinghaosu from qinghao (Artemisia annua L).
^Tu, Youyou (11 October 2011). "The discovery of artemisinin (qinghaosu) and gifts from Chinese medicine". Nature Medicine. Nature. 17 (10): 1217–1220. doi:10.1038/nm.2471. PMID21989013. S2CID10021463.
^"Official Biography" (in Chinese). China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences. Archived from the original on 6 September 2011. Retrieved 20 February 2023.
