The “Cultural Revolution” was, launched in China by President Mao Zedong (1966) and was the most profound social convulsion and political crisis that the People’s Republic of China has ever undergone. The “Cultural Revolution” represented the triumph of anti-intellectualism and for the period 1966-76 destroyed intellectual scholarship, the formal education in China’s schools, and all the qualities associated with professionalism in science. Intellectuals and professors were accused as inherently counter-revolutionaries, who opposed the interests of the masses. Universities were closed, books burned, professors and scientists were exiled in remote villages and scientific journals ceased publication. For 10 years scientists and engineers were cut off from foreign scientific developments. Professor Tú Yōuyōu a Chinese pharmacist was trained in traditional Chinese medicine and worked at the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine (Youyou is her first name). In 1967 President Mao Zedong agreed to set up a secret drug research project, named Project 523, for the discovery of traditional drugs to cure malaria. Tu Youyou was appointed head of the Project 523 research group at her institute. By 1971, her team had screened over 2,000 traditional Chinese recipes and made 380 herbal extracts which were tested on mice. One of the compounds was proved very effective. It was the plant sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua), which was used in the past for “intermittent fevers,” a hallmark of malaria. Tu Youyou discovered that a low-temperature extraction process could be used to isolate (without dissociating the sensitive molecule of Artemisinin) the pure substance. She was not allowed to publish the results, considered as a military secret. Finally, after the death of Mao, scientific publications were allowed. Results were published in the Chinese Medical Journal in 1979 and were met with skepticism at first. In the late 1990s, the well known pharmaceutical company Novartis filed a new Chinese patent for a combination treatment, providing the first artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) at reduced prices to the World Health Organization (WHO). By 2006, Artemisinin had become the treatment of choice for malaria in many countries, proved very effective and its use has saved millions of lives in the developing world. In 2011, Tu Youyou was awarded the prestigious Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award (USA) for her role in the discovery of Artemisinin. In 2015, she was awarded half of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering Artemisinin “a drug that has significantly reduced the mortality rates for patients suffering from malaria”. She was the only Chinese woman scientist to receive the Nobel Prize. This review presents the history of the discovery, her struggle for research of traditional plant extracts under the adverse environment of the “Cultural Revolution”. Dr. Tu Youyou after the Nobel Prize described in detail her scientific work and the problems she faced during the decade of turmoil in the Chinese society. Her example is a testament of scientific integrity, dedication to scientific research and human values in the pharmacy and medical fields.
