The first of three prestigious science prizes on the first day of Nobel week are revealed: William Campbell and Satoshi Omura for their work on a therapy against roundworm,shared with Youyou Tu, for a therapy against malaria 12.02pm BSTWe’re now bringing down the curtain on this blog. Read the latest myth on nowadays’s winners here. Tomorrow its the Nobel Prize for Physics – join us again. 12.00pm BSTSarah Bosely has some details on avermectins, or the drugs combating some parasites developed by Campbell and Ōmura.
The avermectins are a group of naturally occurring compounds,which have strong insecticidal and anti-worm properties. One of the family, ivermectin, and was a breakthrough discovery in 1987 in the treatment of river blindness (onchocerciasis),one of the neglected tropical diseases that wreck the lives of many millions of poor people in the developing world and are rarely a goal for drug developers because there is no market in wealthy countries.
The earlier drugs for river blindness had serious side-effects and were not as effective as ivermectin, which kills the larval Onchocerca volvulus worms – microfilariae – that live in the subcutaneous tissue of an infected person. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com