The sweet wormwood plant, Artemisia annua, has until now been the only source of artemisinin. Drug-makers convert the natural product into derivatives that are more easily taken up by the body, and then combine them with other drugs to prevent the malaria parasite fromdeveloping resistance. Since 2005, when ACTs became the preferred treatment of the World Health Organization (WHO), governments and health policy-makers have encouraged farmers in China, Vietnam and elsewhere to grow A. annua to meet rising demand. But the dependence on erratic donor funding, along with a production cycle that can take a year and a half from planting to drug production, has made it difficult to manage that supply. Last year, a bumper crop of A. annua and fears of declining funding sent artemisinin prices plummeting (see ‘The cost of progress’).
Yeast make ACT production faster and more