Youyou Tu, the 85-year-old Chinese who scripted history by becoming the country's first woman to win a Nobel Prize, today said her findings which helped create anti-malaria medicine was a gift to the world.
"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 discovered Artemisinin, a drug that has significantly reduced mortality rates for malaria patients.
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.
"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.
In a congratulatory letter, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said "Tu's prize symbolises China's prosperity and progress in scientific and technological fields, is a great contribution by traditional Chinese medicine to health, and displays China's growing strengths and rising international standing."
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.
Juleen R Zierath, chairman of the Nobel Committee, said Tu's "inspiration from traditional Chinese medicine" was important. But what was really critical was that Tu identified the active agent in that plant extract," Zierath said, adding that there was a lot of modern chemistry and bio- chemistry attached to this to bring forward this new drug.
"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.
