Artemisinin: What do you mean by a small step for human beings to conquer diseases?

The discovery of artemisinin is a treasure given to mankind by traditional medicine in China. At the most difficult and critical moment of research, I found new inspiration and ideas in TCM literature. Traditional Chinese medicine has served the people of China and Asia for many centuries.

Undoubtedly, the continuous exploration and development of traditional medicine will bring more good medicines to the world. I call for strengthening international cooperation and promoting the research on China and other traditional medicine, so that they can benefit mankind to the maximum extent.

The mechanism of artemisinin is different from the previous antimalarial drugs. The main function of artemisinin's antimalarial mechanism is to interfere with the function of plasmodium surface membrane mitochondria, which first acts on food capsule, surface membrane and mitochondria, then on nuclear membrane and endoplasmic reticulum, and also has some influence on nuclear chromatin, eventually leading to the complete disintegration of plasmodium structure, rather than interfering with malaria parasite's folic acid metabolism.

Its mechanism of action may also be mainly to interfere with the function of mitochondria, the surface membrane, to act on the food bubble membrane, to block the earliest stage of nutrient intake, so that plasmodium quickly appears amino acid hunger, thus rapidly forming autophagic vesicles and continuously excreting them out of the body, and finally plasmodium loses a lot of cytoplasm and dies.