William Campbell, Satoshi Omura and Youyou Tu win 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

The first half of the prize has been awarded jointly to Ireland born William Campbell and Japanese scientist Satoshi Omura by the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet for their discoveries concerning a novel therapy against infections caused by roundworm parasites.

The other half was received by Youyou Tu for her discoveries with regard to a novel therapy against Malaria.

The derivatives of the new drug, Avermectin, discovered by Campbell and Omura have lowered the incidence of river blindness and lymphatic filariasis and showed efficacy against an expanding number of other parasitic diseases.

Artemisinin, a new drug discovered by Youyou Tu has reduced the mortality rates for patients suffering from Malaria.

Japanese microbiologist and expert in isolating natural products Omura of Kitasato University focused on a group of bacteria, Streptomyces, which lives in the soil and was known to produce a plethora of agents with antibacterial activities.

Omura isolated new strains of Streptomyces from soil samples and cultured them in the laboratory.

He selected about 50 of the most promising cultures from many thousand different cultures assuming that they would be further evaluated for their activity against harmful microorganisms.

Campbell of Drew University is an expert in parasite biology working in the US and acquired Omura”s Streptomyces cultures and explored their efficacy.

He showed that a component from one of the cultures was efficient against parasites in domestic as well as farm animals. The purified bioactive agent was named Avermectin and was chemically modified to an effective compound called Ivermectin.

Youyou Tu of the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine was able to address the challenge of developing novel Malaria therapies by opting for traditional herbal medicine.

Tu showed that Artemisinin was effective against the Malaria parasite in infected animals as well as in humans and represents a new class of antimalarial agents that kill the Malaria parasites in their initial development stage.

Commenting on the award, American Chemical Society president Diane Grob Schmidt said: "I’d like to commend Campbell, Omura and Tu for their work on developing treatments and therapies for infections that plague many people.

"Their ground-breaking research is, at its heart, chemistry. I am especially proud to note that Omura is a 40-year member of our Society, which further underscores the important role of chemistry in this work."

Image: Satoshi Omura searched for novel strains of Streptomyces bacteria as a source for new bioactive compounds. Photo: © Nobel Media AB