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Artemisinin is a colorless needle-like crystal, which is easily soluble in chloroform, acetone, ethyl acetate and benzene, soluble in ethanol and ether, slightly soluble in cold petroleum ether and almost insoluble in water. Because of its special peroxy group, it is unstable to heat and easy to be decomposed by wet, hot and reducing substances.
Artemisinin is one of the best drugs to treat malaria drug resistance, and artemisinin-based combination therapy is the most effective and important means to treat malaria at present.
In recent years, with the deepening of research, artemisinin has been found to have other pharmacological effects, such as anti-tumor, treatment of pulmonary hypertension, anti-diabetes, embryotoxicity, antifungal, immunomodulation, antivirus, anti-inflammatory, anti-pulmonary fibrosis, antibacterial and cardiovascular effects.
1969? During the period of 1972, the 523 research group, in which China pharmacist Tu Youyou participated, discovered and extracted artemisinin from Artemisia annua, creating a new treatment method for malaria. Tu Youyou won the Lasker Prize in Clinical Medicine in 201and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 20 15 (shared with two other scientists).
Malaria is one of the oldest diseases in human beings, and it is still an important public health problem that is widely concerned around the world and needs to be solved urgently.
As early as 163 1 year, the Italian missionary AgostinoSalumbrino obtained effective drugs for treating fever from Peruvians in South America and brought them back to Europe for treating fever. It was not long before people found that this medicine could obviously relieve intermittent fever.
1820, French chemist pelletier and pharmacist Joseph Binet.Alfred Caventou isolated effective components for treating malaria from cinchona bark and named them quinine.
1944, American organic chemists RobertWoodward and WilliamDoering first successfully synthesized quinine.
Since then, scientists have continuously improved antimalarial drugs, forming aromatic and heterocyclic methanol represented by quinine, 4-aminoquinoline represented by chloroquine, and heterocyclic aminophenol antimalarial drugs represented by amodiaquine. These antimalarial drugs have played an important role in preventing and treating malaria.