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Medical prize honors discoverer of malarial drug

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NEW YORK (AP) — A scientist who discovered a powerful malaria drug

and two others who illuminated how proteins fold within cells have

won prestigious medical awards.

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The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation announced the $250,000 prizes

Monday and will present them Sept. 23 in New York.

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Tu Youyou, 81, of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences in

Beijing, won the clinical research award for discovering the

malaria drug artemisinin (ar-tuh-MIHS’-ihn-ihn), which the

foundation said has saved millions of lives.

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In the late 1960s, as part of a Chinese government project, Tu

began combing ancient texts and folk remedies to find a treatment

for malaria. She collected 2,000 potential recipes, from which her

team made 380 extracts. One extract, from sweet wormwood, showed

promise in mouse studies. Following a clue from an ancient

document, Tu redesigned the extraction process to make the extract

more potent. In the early 1970s, she and her colleagues isolated

the active ingredient, artemisinin.

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The Lasker award for basic research is shared by Dr. Franz-Ulrich

Hartl, 54, of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in

Martinsried, Germany, and Dr. Arthur Horwich, 60, of Yale

University. Their key discoveries about how proteins fold within

cells may someday help scientists find new treatments for such

illnesses as Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and Lou Gehrig’s diseases,

the foundation said.

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Before their work, scientists thought that proteins needed no help

to fold into their proper shapes. But in the late 1980s, the two

men discovered that the folding happens within a cage-like

structure that promotes the process.

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“They gave the medical world a key understanding of how proteins

reach their biological potential,” the foundation said.

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A third Lasker prize, for public service, was awarded to the

Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health. Since 1953,

the center has been “a model research hospital, providing

innovative therapy and high-quality patient care, treating rare and

severe diseases and producing outstanding physician-scientists,”

the foundation said.

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The Lasker foundation was established in 1942. Albert Lasker was an

advertising executive who died in 1952. His wife Mary was a

longtime champion of medical research before her death in

1994.

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Online:

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Lasker Foundation:Ā 

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