The Threat of Artemisinin-Resistant Malaria

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Abstract
In the 1970s, Chinese government scientists working on a secret “Project 523” developed a new class of potent antimalarial drugs, the artemisinins or qinghaosu derivatives. In mostly unpublished work that has just been recognized by a 2011 Lasker Award to Tu Youyou, researchers in China isolated the active compounds from the plant Artemisia annua, tested them in mice, analyzed the chemical structure of the artemisinins, and demonstrated their high potency and rapid efficacy in human trials. Although they were widely used in China during the 1980s, only in the 1990s did the artemisinins come to wider global attention in the form of artemisinin-based combination therapies. Over the past decade, these highly efficacious treatments, along with other malaria-control measures, have contributed to significant reductions of the malaria burden in many areas of the world, including parts of Africa.

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