Malaria: A vector-borne disease that infects Plasmodium from the bite of a mosquito. As of today, 3.2 billion people are still at risk of malaria every year, and there are 198 million cases of malaria, causing 585,000 deaths each year. Although our country has basically eliminated malaria in the last century, in many third world countries, the lack of medical conditions and the pollution of drinking water make malaria still raging.
When it comes to malaria, one number has to be mentioned -- 804. These three simple numbers account for 95 per cent of the global public market for antimalarial injections. What is the story of its past life, and how will the legend of this life be written?
In 1967, an urgent mission deployed - this is the '523 plan', the survey by chairman MAO and premier Zhou instructions, to 'the emergency aid, combat readiness important task project' antimalarial battle almost all assembled when China size medical research institutions, large to tu and her team, is located in the southwest of guilin pharmaceutical. It was during this historical period that Tu Youyou and her team discovered artemisinin, which has been hailed by the international community as 'a milestone in the history of anti-malaria drug research'. But it has been facing a difficult to break through the problem, resulting in a slow effect of the drug effect, can not be made into an injection for the rescue of coma patients.
In 1977, the National Conference on Anti-Malaria Research and Plan was held in Nanning, Guangxi. The main topic of the conference is to modify the structure of artemisinin to solve the problem of water solubility. A number of drug research institutions in Beijing and Shanghai participated in the project. Guangxi's Guilin Pharma is also lucky to participate in the local production of Artemisia annua and the strong recommendation of the autonomous region government. At that time, the best scientific research force of Guilin Pharma was only Liu Xu, who had 10 years of experience in synthetic medicine, leading a veteran worker and two apprentices. Liu Xu recalled that although Guilin Pharma was the best pharmaceutical factory in Guangxi at that time, compared with the scientific research institutions in Beijing and Shanghai, it was like a small workshop. But in this small workshop, this team of 4 people started working day and night just because of the words 'proving the scientific research strength of Guangxi people to the world'. What supported them was their feelings, their unyielding attitude, and their courage to explore and be the first. After thousands of failures, Liu and his team finally designed 13 artemisinin derivatives. One of them, No. 804, improved the efficacy of artemisinin by three to seven times, and solved the problem of artemisinin water-solubility, so that it could be used as an injection to fight severe malaria.
No. 804 originated from artemisinin, and the person who made the love was Guilin Pharma. It was this relationship that enabled Guangxi pharmaceutical companies to truly master the independent intellectual property rights of artemisinin drugs, breaking the patent restrictions of global pharmaceutical giants. From then on, China's 'intelligent manufacturing' could soar across the global market of antimalarial drugs and save the lives of countless malaria patients.
No. 804, its love in the past life is destined to write a different legend in this life:
In 1980 the name 804 was changed to artesunate, a name familiar to malaria-affected areas of the world; Then in 1985, it obtained the Chinese invention patent; In 1987, it obtained the X-01 New Drug Certificate issued by the Ministry of Health of China and was approved to be marketed as a Class I New Drug. In 2003, artesunate was listed in the international pharmacopoeia by the World Health Organization and was listed as the first choice for malaria treatment in the 'Guide to Malaria Drug Use'.
Today, malaria affects one out of every 1,000 people in the world, and artesunate for injection, with which Guilin Pharma has its own intellectual property rights, has helped more than 24 million people with severe malaria recover to health, most of them African children under the age of five.
Today's artesunate, depending on its curative effect, is gaining global prestige. In 2010, the Lancet, the world's leading medical journal, published a report that artesunate for injection was significantly better than quinine. Since then, artesunate for injection has been one of the few original Chinese medicines to make the list of the annual 'honour list' of the independent French medical journal Prescription.
This was 804, its name was artesunate, and it had an extraordinary past life and will do so in this one!