Artémisia

Artemisia Annua and cancer. 1) The strange story of Artemisia from antiquity to the present day. The anti-malarial properties of Artemesia annua have been known for millennia in China, but they were also in Egypt in the 1st Millennium BC. the treatment of fevers with this plant, which has continued for centuries to this day in the Chinese countryside, had been somewhat forgotten by "scholars". The history of work on Artemisia Annua It was following the ravages of malaria in the ranks of the North Vietnamese army that Mao Tse Toung set in motion in 1967, in the midst of the cultural revolution, the "523 project" (so named because it was launched May 23, 1967). It was a secret program of research into the treatment of malaria , based on the study of traditional chinese medecine treatments The Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine entrusted this research to one of its members, Tu Youyou, a 36-year-old pharmacist, whose name has remained totally unknown until recent years. It wasn't until 2005 that Tu Youyou was associated with the discovery of artemisinin, and that she became famous. In 2011, she received the prestigious Lasker DeBakey Clinical Research Award. The search for Tu Youyou She has collected several thousand herbal recipes; she evaluated 380 extracts from different plants, including Artemisia Annua (or Qinghao), which had long been known for its effectiveness in treating recurrent fevers. The initial results obtained by Tu Youyou were disappointing, as the extracts were prepared with boiling water which destroyed the active components.