An application by a team led by pharmacologist and Nobel Prize laureate Tu Youyou for clinical trials using antimalarial drug artemisinin to treat autoimmune inflammatory disease lupus is under review by China FDA, China.org.cn said. The online news portal said a source at the CFDA confirmed the application this week. Last year, Tu was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, the first Chinese citizen to win in the sciences, for her work on using a traditional Chinese medicine, artemisinin, to develop the country's first modern drug. Her team has worked with artemisinin on autoimmune diseases for the past decade, China.org.cn said, adding that in May last year, "a team from Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica obtained a permit for similar tests of a water-soluble artemisinin derivative to treat lupus." Report
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