Nobel awarded to discoverers of ivermectin and artemisinin

The 2015 Nobel prize for physiology or medicine has been awarded to three researchers whose work has had a huge effect on the treatment of parasitic diseases that affect many millions of people in poor countries.

One half of the prize goes jointly to William Campbell, emeritus research fellow at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, and Satoshi Omura, professor emeritus at Kitasato University in Japan, “for their discoveries concerning a novel therapy against infections caused by roundworm parasites.” The agent they discovered was avermectin, later chemically modified to create the drug now in widespread use, ivermectin.

The second half of the prize went …