"To win the Nobel prize or not is not that important for me, but this honour attests that our traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an inspiring resource which requires further research," Tu, who won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine for her work in helping to create an anti-malaria medicine, told state-run Xinhua news agency.
Born in 1930, Tu shares the prize with Irish-born William Campbell and Japan's Satoshi Omura, the Nobel Assembly at Sweden's Karolinska Institute announced yesterday.
Tu described her hopes for anti- malaria therapy, saying there were many health benefits of TCM research waiting to be discovered.
Describing the prize as a great honour, she was quick to give credit to her research team.
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"The prize is a credit for Chinese scientists' collective efforts and shows the attention paid to TCM research by the international scientific community.
"It is a proud moment for China and Chinese scientists. Artemisinin is a gift for the people of the world people from traditional Chinese medicine. 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.
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.
To ensure the safety of the new drug, Tu and her fellow researchers volunteered to test it on themselves.
Tu, who doesn't have a medical degree or a PhD, married Li Tingzhao in 1963 and the couple has two daughters. She was enrolled to a pharmacology school here after which she began researching at the Academy of Chinese Traditional Medicine.
"It cannot be said that there are no treasures in TCM, but they are not ready-made," Tu said, stressing that TCM requires industrious research.