ABSTRACT
Ancient herbal medicine systems such as Ayurveda and Chinese traditional medicine have provided countless drug leads and remedies to cure mild illness and life-threatening conditions. These ancient systems are always being considered as the primary sources of inspiration for new drug discovery. Artemisinin (Figure 41.1), an excellent antimalarial drug all time, has been discovered based on the uses of Artemisia annua L. in Chinese traditional medicine to treat malaria (Hao et al., 2002). In 2015, Youyou Tu was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine along with William C. Campbell and Satoshi Omura for the discovery of artemisinin (Kasote, 2018).
