Editing Plasmodium falciparum (section)

===History===
{{See also|History of malaria}}
In 1640, Huan del Vego first employed the [[tincture]] of the [[cinchona]] bark for treating malaria; the native Indians of [[Peru]] and Ecuador had been using it even earlier for treating fevers. Thompson (1650) introduced this "[[Jesuits]]' bark" to [[England]]. Its first recorded use there was by John Metford of [[Northampton]] in 1656. [[Richard Morton (physician)|Morton]] (1696) presented the first detailed description of the clinical picture of malaria and of its treatment with cinchona. [[Gize]] (1816) studied the extraction of crystalline [[quinine]] from the cinchona bark and [[Pierre Joseph Pelletier|Pelletier]] and [[Joseph Bienaimé Caventou|Caventou]] (1820) in [[France]] extracted pure quinine [[alkaloid]]s, which they named quinine and [[cinchonine]].<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Greenwood|first1=David|title=The quinine connection|journal=Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy|date=1992|volume=30|issue=4|pages=417–427|doi=10.1093/jac/30.4.417|pmid=1490916}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Kaufman|first1=Teodoro S.|last2=Rúveda|first2=Edmundo A.|title=The Quest for Quinine: Those Who Won the Battles and Those Who Won the War|journal=Angewandte Chemie International Edition|date=28 January 2005|volume=44|issue=6|pages=854–885|doi=10.1002/anie.200400663|pmid=15669029}}</ref> The total synthesis of quinine was achieved by American chemists R.B. Woodward and W.E. Doering in 1944. Woodward received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1965.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Todd|first1=L.|last2=Cornforth|first2=J.|last3=T.|first3=A. R.|last4=C.|first4=J. W.|title=Robert Burns Woodward. 10 April 1917-8 July 1979|journal=Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society|date=1981|volume=27|pages=628–695|doi=10.1098/rsbm.1981.0025|doi-access=|s2cid=71742454 }}</ref>

Attempts to make synthetic antimalarials began in 1891. [[Quinacrine|Atabrine]], developed in 1933, was used widely throughout the Pacific in World War II, but was unpopular because of its adverse effects.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Bispham|first1=W. N.|title=Toxic Reactions Following the Use of Atabrine in Malaria 1|journal=The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene|date=1941|volume=s1-21|issue=3|pages=455–459|doi=10.4269/ajtmh.1941.s1-21.455}}</ref> In the late 1930s, the Germans developed [[chloroquine]], which went into use in the North African campaigns. Creating a secret military project called [[Project 523]], [[Mao Zedong]] encouraged Chinese scientists to find new antimalarials after seeing the casualties in the Vietnam War. [[Tu Youyou]] discovered [[artemisinin]] in the 1970s from sweet wormwood (''[[Artemisia annua]]''). This drug became known to Western scientists in the late 1980s and early 1990s and is now a standard treatment. Tu won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Su|first1=Xin-Zhuan|last2=Miller|first2=Louis H.|title=The discovery of artemisinin and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine|journal=Science China Life Sciences|date=2015|volume=58|issue=11|pages=1175–1179|doi=10.1007/s11427-015-4948-7|pmid=26481135|pmc=4966551}}</ref>