Nobel prize for the artemisinin and ivermectin discoveries: a great boost towards elimination of the global infectious diseases of poverty

Abstract

This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, awarded for the discovery of artemisinin and ivermectin, was divided between Youyou Tu "for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against malaria" and William C. Campbell together with Satoshi ?mura "for their discoveries concerning a novel therapy against roundworm infections" (Fig. 1). These parasitic infections have endangered human existence disproportionately, impeding productivity and economic growth due to major public health and societal burdens in developing and semi-industrialized countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and South America [1, 2]., For example, approximately 25 million people in Africa are still infected by onchocerciasis with more than 300,000 suffering from blindness, which explains the disease's alternative name 'river blindness'. It is estimated that the population at risk of just this one disease in the 31 endemic countries will be 250 million by 2016 [2, 3].