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 Irish-born William Campbell and Japan's Satoshi Omura won half of
the prize for discovering avermectin, a derivative of which has been
used to treat hundreds of millions of people with river blindness
and lymphatic filariasis, or elephantiasis.
China's Youyou Tu was awarded the other half of the prize for
discovering artemisinin, a drug that has slashed malaria deaths and
has become the mainstay of fighting the mosquito-borne disease.
Some 3.4 billion people, most of them living in poor countries, are
at risk of contracting these parasitic diseases.
"These two discoveries have provided humankind with powerful new
means to combat these debilitating diseases that affect hundreds of
millions of people annually," the Nobel Assembly at Sweden's
Karolinska Institute said.
"The consequences in terms of improved human health and reduced
suffering are immeasurable."
TRADITIONAL MEDICINE
Today, the medicine ivermectin, a derivative of avermectin made by
Merck & Co, is used worldwide to fight roundworm parasites, while
artemisinin-based drugs from firms including Sanofi and Novartis are
the main weapons against malaria.
Omura and Campbell made their breakthrough in fighting parasitic
worms, or helminths, after studying compounds from soil bacteria.
That led to the discovery of avermectin, which was then further
modified into ivermectin.
The treatment is so successful that river blindness and lymphatic
filariasis are now on the verge of being eradicated.
Youyou turned to a traditional Chinese herbal medicine in her hunt
for a better malaria treatment, following the declining success of
the older drugs chloroquine and quinine. This led to the isolation
of artemisinin, a new class of anti-malaria drug.
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"We now have drugs that kill these parasites very early in their
life-cycle," said Juleen Zierath, chair of the Nobel Committee.
"They not only kill these parasites but they stop these infections
from spreading."
Despite rapid progress in controlling malaria in the past decade,
the disease still kills around half a million people a year, the
vast majority of them babies and young children in the poorest parts
of Africa.
The 8 million Swedish crowns ($960,000) medicine prize is the first
of the Nobel prizes awarded each year. Prizes for achievements in
science, literature and peace were first awarded in 1901 in
accordance with the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred
Nobel.
(Additional reporting by Daniel Dickson and Kate Kelland; Editing by
Alistair Scrutton and Ralph Boulton)
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