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Malaria is a potentially fatal disease but used to be treated effectively with chloroquine and quinolines. In the 1960s, as a result of a failed attempt to globally eradicate the disease, the malaria parasite started developing resistance to these drugs and new treatments needed to be found. In 1964 China began confidential research into new antimalarials to tackle this challenge. A young scientist named Tu Youyou was asked to head up and build a research group searching for antimalarial drugs among traditional Chinese medicines. Her work led her to the plant Artemisia annua from which she extracted an active agent called artemisinin, or Qinghaosu (青蒿素) in Chinese. Today this antimalarial is used to treat millions across the globe. Photo: A gambiae mosquito is a known vector for the parasitic disease, malaria, caused by organisms that are members of the genus Plasmodium, 2014.. Credit: © CDC Public Health Image Library. #NobelPrize #medicine #science #malaria