This year's Nobel Laureates have developed therapies that have revolutionised the treatment of some of the most devastating parasitic diseases.
Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, are relying on synthetic biology to produce sufficient amounts of a medicine based on an ancient Chinese herbal remedy, to protect over a million children who die each year from malaria. The drug called artemisinin is based on extracts from the Chinese plant Artemesia annua (sweet wormwood), which has been used in China to treat malaria since at least the second century BC.
'They don't always agree with our governments, their teachers or their parents, but it is the conviction of their ideas, and their determination to share them with the world that, I believe, is one of the greatest sources of hope for our planet.' 'The colonisation of space, understanding the very building blocks of matter and the universe, utilising our understanding of the human genome to conquer disease -- these are the tasks waiting for a fellowship of minds to realise new triumphs in our collective destiny.'
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