Science Vientiane's first vaccine and artemisinin

In daily life, a shot of vaccine may be the key to your resistance to disease, and the discovery of artemisinin has saved the lives of millions of malaria patients around the world. What scientific mysteries are hidden behind these medical breakthroughs? In the following "Science in the World", we will lead you to review these medical inventions that have changed the destiny of mankind, explore how science can dispel the haze of disease and protect our healthy future.

1. The first vaccine

Vaccines refer to biological products made from various pathogenic microorganisms for vaccination. Its discovery is a milestone event in the history of human development.

In 1796, British doctor Jenner inoculated the fluid from the blisters on the skin of a girl suffering from cowpox into an 8-year-old healthy boy. This was considered the most risky experiment in medical history, but the world's first vaccine was born, and Jenner was later hailed as the "Father of Immunology."

In fact, in layman's terms, the principle of vaccines is this: humans process the virus, remove its toxicity, and when it is no longer a threat to the human body, implant it into the body, so that the immune cells can recognize that it is a virus and practice how to deal with it. In this way, when the real virus invades the human body, it will be quickly eliminated by the immune cells that have long known and understood it. And this virus implanted into the human body without toxicity is the vaccine.

In a sense, the history of human reproduction is the history of human beings' continuous struggle against diseases and natural disasters. The most important means of controlling infectious diseases is prevention, and vaccination is considered the most effective measure. Therefore, continuous research on viruses and development of vaccines has become a lifelong career for mankind.

So do you know how vaccines are developed and produced? Do you also want to make a vaccine by yourself? There is such an exhibit in the Shandong Science and Technology Museum (read the instructions on the exhibit), so you can do it yourself and experience how vaccines are made.

However, although this exhibit is simple to operate, it seems that everyone can make vaccines. In fact, vaccine development is a comprehensive subject that integrates microbiology, immunology, epidemiology, biochemistry, molecular biology and genetics. In recent years, with the establishment, improvement and perfection of new biological technologies, the development of vaccine development and its corresponding basic research has been greatly promoted, and many new theories, concepts and new technologies have been generated.

2. Discovery of artemisinin

With the development of modern science and technology, diseases are no longer a scary thing because of the emergence of vaccines. However, there are still many diseases, such as malaria, which are still terrible enemies of mankind in today's technologically advanced world. Humans have never stopped fighting against this ancient and stubborn disease, and resisting diseases and saving lives have become the most noble mission of medicine and life sciences.

Artemisinin Node at Science and Technology Museum

Over the past 200 years, with the progress of epidemiology, most deadly infectious diseases have been eliminated, but malaria is still a terrible gap between human life and health. So what is malaria? How is the disease spread?

Malaria is a global acute parasitic infectious disease caused by Plasmodium and transmitted mainly by Anopheles mosquitoes. Malaria was also called miasma in ancient my country. It is characterized by periodic fever and cold, and various syndromes caused by splenomegaly, anemia, and damage to the brain, liver, kidneys, heart, intestines, stomach, etc. Every year, there are between 300 and 500 million patients suffering from malaria, and between 1 million and 3 million people die from malaria.

Faced with the terrible threat of malaria, humans have been looking for ways to fight it. In the 19th century, French chemists isolated quinine from the cinchona tree. Since then, chloroquine, a substitute for quinine, has become a specific drug for fighting malaria. In the 1960s, malarial parasites developed resistance to quinine drugs, leaving more than 200 million malaria patients worldwide with no cure and a sharp rise in mortality. It was not until the emergence of artemisinin, a new antimalarial drug discovered by Chinese scientist Tu Youyou, that a new antimalarial drug was brought to mankind.

Artemisinin is still the only option for humans to cure malaria. Its discovery has rewritten the history of antimalarial drugs that only use nitrogen-containing heterocyclic compounds, marking a new era in human antimalarial history. Half a century later, my country has achieved "malaria-free China" and passed the WHO's malaria elimination certification in 2021.

The research and development of vaccines and antiviral drugs is a "luxury" project that costs a lot of money and takes many years. But if it can significantly reduce the incidence of human diseases, then it has successfully realized its value. It is conceivable that in the future, life sciences will continue to usher in changes in concepts and technological innovations, which will allow us to examine diseases, aging, health, and longevity from a higher level. Perhaps, the diseases that we are helpless today will become handy in the near future, and human life span will be greatly extended. This is not out of reach.