lumefantrine first inventor
- Deng Rong Xian researcher
OF: Gu its blunt
Deng Rongxian was born in Chengdu, Sichuan Province in 1927. In 1945, he was admitted to the former Central University Department of Electrical Engineering. He studied in Chongqing for one year. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, the school returned to Nanjing. Enter the department at the same time as a classmate. After graduating in 1950, our entire class was assigned to Chongqing by the Ministry of Health of the Southwest Military and Political Committee. Deng Rongxian stayed as an assistant teacher in the department because of his excellent grades. At that time, due to the international environment under the Cold War, our country could only send Qian Liu scholars to the former Soviet Union and Eastern countries. In 1952, Deng Rongxian was selected and sent to Beijing to train in the Soviet Union for one year. In July of the same year, he joined the Communist Party of China. In 1953, he went to the Leningrad Institute of Chemistry and Pharmacy in the Soviet Union as a research student. In 1957, he received an associate doctorate degree with a research thesis on the anti-rheumatic drug "1,2-diphenyl-3,5-pyrazolidinedione". After returning to China, he was assigned to , Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, as an assistant researcher, engaged in anti-tumor drug research, and was promoted to associate researcher one year later. At the end of 1959, the Institute of Toxicology and Drugs of the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences was transferred to Beijing to engage in military drug research. The research group she led has synthesized nearly 100 new floral compounds of various types. In 1965, he was appointed as the deputy director of the Medicinal Chemistry Laboratory of the Institute of Radiation Medicine, Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences.
Figure 1. Deng Rongxian
2 is a new mission.In 1967, Deng Rongxian was transferred to the Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology of the hospital to join the “523 Project Group”. The non-combat attrition caused by malaria is even higher than the combat attrition. Based on this situation, Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai instructed on May 23, 1967: to gather national scientific research forces to research new antimalarial drugs, and the "523 Project" was formally established. The main results of the project include the famous " artemisinin" "Tu Youyou, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology, is also one of the important members of the "523 Project". Of course, the discovery of artemisinin drugs is not only the credit of Tu Youyou alone, but also the efforts of countless scientists including Deng Rongxian, Li Ying, Zhou Yiqing, etc.
chemical structure of artemisinin 2. FIG
Deng Rong Xian after the Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology promoted researcher. She and her team tried to develop new antimalarial drugs using chemical synthetic methods. After more than ten years of hard work, they synthesized more than 300 new compounds. After active screening, they finally discovered a new antimalarial drug, lumefantrine (Lumefantrine). The study found that benzofluorenol has a very high killing rate of Plasmodium in vivo. What is more surprising is that benzofluorenol has an effective rate of more than 95% against chloroquine-resistant falciparum malaria, and the recurrence rate is less than 5%. , And the side effects are small. Phenfluorenol was identified as a new drug by the National New Drug Review Committee in 1987.In the new drug certificate issued by the Ministry of Health, researcher Deng Rongxian was listed as the first inventor. The application of benzofluorenol, artemisinin and their derivatives not only made my country basically eradicate malaria, but also saved the lives of all human malaria patients. This invention has a high technological content and is of great significance. Therefore, it won the first prize of my country's national technological invention. At the same time, the achievement also won the first prize of scientific and technological progress in the army.
Figure 3. lumefantrine chemical structure
recurrence rate due to the presence of artemisinin in the treatment of malaria Gao , It is easy to produce drug resistance and other shortcomings. Chinese scientists continue to modify the chemical structure of artemisinin, and successively synthesize a series of new antimalarial compounds such as artemether, artesunate, and dihydroartemisinin. Among them, artemether successfully developed by researcher Li Ying of Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has the best effect, and its curative effect is 10-20 times that of artemisinin. However, after long-term application, it is found that artemisinin drugs are prone to drug resistance. Deng Rongxian’s colleague Zhou Yiqing, an associate researcher, continued to research and found that the compatibility of artemether and benzofluorenol is complementary, that is, artemether has a quick effect but the recurrence rate is high, and benzofluorenol completely kills the malaria parasites and has a long-lasting effect, but the symptoms are slow to control. The combination of the two has been proved by animal experiments to have good curative effect, low toxicity and no obvious side effects. As a result, a new preparation for the treatment of falciparum malaria "artemether-benzofluorenol tablets" (abbreviated as "complex artemether tablets") was developed, which was included in the 1990 edition of " Chinese Pharmacopoeia ". It is another major contribution of Chinese pharmaceutical workers to human health after artemisinin.
Figure 4. Deng Rong Xian in the laboratory
1994, my country's Academy of Military Medical with Novartis ( Novartis signed a patent development license agreement: Novartis is responsible for the international promotion and research and development of compound artemether.The Chinese party CITIC Company is the project liaison, Kunming Pharmaceutical Company is responsible for the production of artemether, Xijiang Xinchang Pharmaceutical Company is responsible for the production of benzofluorenol, and the preparations are produced by Kunming Pharmaceutical and Beijing Novartis Pharmaceuticals. On April 7, 2009, the US FDA approved Novartis’s application for the trade name of Artemether-Lumefantrine Tablets (Artemether-Lumefantrine Tablets): Coartem. It is used to treat patients with single malaria infection caused by Plasmodium falciparum weighing more than 5kg (including 5kg). Since then, compound artemether has become the first synthetic drug developed by the Chinese and approved by the US FDA. The drug won the European Inventor Award in 2009 and the Galen Award in 2010. Since then, the compound artemether developed by the Chinese has finally gone to the world.
Figure 5. Kunming Pharmaceutical Company production of Coartem tablets product
recent World Health Organization press release The communiqué stated: China has officially obtained the WHO malaria elimination certification. The communiqué stated that the number of malaria infections in China decreased from 30 million in the 1940s to zero. In 2019, there were approximately 229 million malaria cases worldwide, and Africa accounted for 94% of the world. The death rate of inpatients after the use of compound artemether dropped by more than 90%. The innovation of new compound drugs in our country has accelerated the pace of elimination of malaria, which is a remarkable feat.
Although Tu Youyou, Deng Rongxian, Zhou Yiqing, Li Ying and other scientists have made important contributions to the country and all mankind,But none of them were elected academicians, and none of them became rich. Without the discovery of artemisinin and its derivatives and phenylfluorenol, there would be no compound artemether; without the global promotion of Novartis, compound artemether would not be able to go to the world to benefit mankind.
Alumni Deng Rongxian is a second-level researcher of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, and has served as director of the room and member of the expert group. He has co-authored monographs such as "Introduction to New Drug Evaluation" and "Basic Principles of Drug Design". In addition, she has published 26 papers publicly and 21 confidential papers have not been published. In 1993, Deng Rongxian alumni won the Wang Danping Science Award.
Alumni Deng Rongxian has been unable to take care of her children and family for a long time in order to complete her work, and sometimes even had to temporarily tie her son to the foot of the bed for work. While making outstanding contributions, the long-term overload of work has seriously damaged her health. In 1998, Deng Rongxian accidentally caught a cold. Due to his negligence, his condition suddenly deteriorated. Unfortunately, he passed away in Beijing on February 5 at the age of 71.
This article only misses the past in Huaxiba day and evening classmates.
modified on August 18, 2021
# Author's profile # _span2span _strong11span7 _strong11span7 _span2pA native of Rong County, Sichuan, a 46-level alumni of the Department of Pharmacy in West China, a high-level engineer of the former Southwest Pharmaceutical Factory and Chengdu Pharmaceutical Fifth Factory, the chief engineer of Hainan Traditional Chinese Medicine Technology Development Company, a member of the Chongqing Traditional Chinese Medicine Reorganization Committee in the 1950s, "Pharmaceutical Bulletin" (Now " Chinese Pharmaceutical Journal") editorial board, published more than 10 papers in domestic periodicals, and applied for multiple patents.
