Guardian blog interviews researcher regarding artemisinin synthesis discovery

Feb 8 2012

In this post in the Guardian's "The Observer," Mark Honigsbaum, a research associate at the University of Zurich's Institute for Medical History, interviews Peter Seeberger, the director of the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany, about a recent announcement that Seeberger and colleague François Lévesque "have discovered a simple and cost-effective way of synthesizing artemisinin from the waste products of the" sweet wormwood plant from which it is extracted. Honigsbaum notes that "extracting artemisinin is expensive and because it takes time to cultivate the plant there are often bottlenecks in supply," and writes, "Their discovery has the potential to make the drug more affordable for the 225 million people affected by malaria every year" (2/4).