MDPI is pleased to share the winners of the 2024 Tu Youyou Award: Richard DiMarchi from Indiana University, USA and Rolf Müller from Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), Germany.

The Tu Youyou Award was founded by MDPI to recognize the achievements of academics within the fields of natural products chemistry and medicinal chemistry. The award’s namesake, Professor Tu Youyou, is a Nobel Prize winner credited for her discovery of artemisinin which had a significant impact on global health.

MDPI remains inspired by Tu Youyou’s career and proudly presents this prestigious award in her honor.

The achievements of Richard DiMarchi and Rolf Müller highlight the transformative impact of natural products chemistry and medicinal chemistry. MDPI congratulates them and invites the wider academic community to join us in celebrating their significant contributions.

This article will provide insight into the career of Professor Tu Youyou which the award was built upon, followed by a discussion of the 2024 Tu Youyou award winners and their incredible achievements.

Tu Youyou’s Impact

Professor Tu Youyou’s remarkable career is characterized by her commitment to innovation and excellence, most notably her groundbreaking discovery of antimalarial treatments that have saved countless lives.

Tu Youyou was born in Ningbo, China, in 1930. After contracting tuberculosis at the age of 16, Tu Youyou became inspired to pursue a career in medicine. Her career started at the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine (now China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences) in 1955, where she remains a Chief Scientist.

In early 1969, Tu Youyou was appointed head of the Project 523 research group, which endeavored to find a cure for drug resistant malaria. For Tu Youyou and her team, this was no easy feat; an enormous amount of compounds had been unsuccessfully tested as antimalarial treatments by previous research institutes. It wasn’t until Tu Youyou’s team turned towards ancient Chinese medical texts, that a breakthrough was made.

Tu Youyou’s focus on sweet wormwood marked the team’s transformative discovery. Tu Youyou extracted the compound artemisinin from the plant, which would provide an effective cure for malaria. In a successful synergy of Traditional Chinese Medicine and contemporary science, Tu Youyou’s discovery of artemisinin has significantly reduced the global mortality rates of individuals with malaria.

Artemisinin combination therapies (ATC) are now recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the standard treatment for malaria. Furthermore, Tu Youyou was awarded the Lasker–DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award in 2011, which acclaimed the discovery of artemisinin as “arguably the most important pharmaceutical intervention in the last half-century”.

In 2015, Tu Youyou became a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Most recently, she was elected as an international member of the US National Academy of Sciences.

MDPI’s Tu Youyou Award

In 2009, after years of studying the research conducted by Professor Tu Youyou’s team, Dr. Shu-Kun Lin, the founder of MDPI, published a Special Issue in the MDPI journal Molecules in commemoration of Professor Tu Youyou’s 80th birthday.

The MDPI Tu Youyou Award was later established in 2016 to celebrate the outstanding contributions made by scholars within the fields of natural products chemistry and medicinal chemistry.

The Tu Youyou Award is presented every two years and operates on a nomination-only basis. Research institutions, universities, and academic societies are invited to nominate a maximum of two candidates per award period.

Winners receive a cash prize of CHF 100,000, which is equally divided in the outcome of multiple awardees.

For a list of all Tu Youyou Award winners, click here.

2024 winners

MDPI would like to express its congratulations to the 2024 Tu Youyou winners, Professor Richard DiMarchi and Professor Rolf Müller.

Professor Richard DiMarchi

Richard DiMarchi is a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Gill Chair in Biomolecular Sciences at Indiana University. Highlighted in his biography from the University of Indiana, Professor DiMarchi is credited as a co-inventor on more than one hundred US patents and has contributed to more than two hundred and fifty peer-reviewed publications.

After studying chemistry at an undergraduate level, Professor DiMarchi completed a PhD in Biochemistry at Indiana University in 1979. He started his career in industry at the Lilly Research Laboratories, where in 1996 he was appointed Group Vice President.

Professor Richard D. DiMarchi returned to his alma mater in 2003, starting his current position as Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Gill Chair in Biomolecular Science. Additionally, he became the Vice President and Head of the Novo Nordisk Research Centre between 2016 and 2020.

DiMarchi’s research

Through his research, Professor DiMarchi has made outstanding contributions to the discovery and development of rDNA-derived Humulin®, Humalog®, rGlucagon®, and Forteo®. His research has been fundamental to the understanding of glucagon and incretin physiology, including the discovery of single molecule multi-mechanism agonists for the treatment of diabetes and obesity.

A key example of this success is the discovery that glucagon and GIP agonism can synergize the therapeutic efficacy of GLP-1.

Professor DiMarchi’s work and his conceptual approach have transformed the management of excessive body weight to a condition comparable to how hypertension, adult-onset diabetes, and excess cholesterol are medicinally managed.

“Professor DiMarchi was recognized by the 2024 Tu Youyou Award Committee members as being an exceptional leader in the medicinal chemistry of peptides and proteins of natural origin, and as a pioneer in the field of chemical biotechnology. His very important discoveries have led to breakthroughs in new drugs related to the therapy of diabetes and obesity. He has been named as an inventor on a very large number of patents, and he has had initially a highly successful scientific and administrative career in industry, which was followed by over two decades in academia as a distinguished professor.” – Prof. Dr. A. Douglas Kinghorn, Chair of the Award Committee

A testament to the quality and real-world applications of his research, Professor DiMarchi holds an arsenal of impressive accolades. He has been awarded several major honors, including being inducted into both the US National Academy of Medicine and the US National Academy of Inventors in 2015. More recently, in 2023, he became the recipient of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Mani L. Bhaumik Breakthrough of the Year Award.

Professor Rolf Müller

Professor Rolf Müller is the Managing Director of the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) and the Head of the Department of Microbial Natural Products at Saarland University. Professor Müller is celebrated by the awards committee for his dedication to publishing outstanding research and educating the next generation of scientists.

Professor Müller received a PhD in Pharmaceutical Biology from the University of Bonn in 1994. In the early stages of his career, he held research positions at the University of Washington in the US, followed by his habilitation at the Braunschweig University of Technology. Professor Müller was appointed as full professor at Saarland University in 2003. In 2010, he played a pivotal role in founding the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research, where he remains as the managing director.

Müller’s research

Professor Müller runs a prolific research program dealing with microbial natural product isolation and structural characterization, biosynthesis, genomics, industrial microbiology, and biotechnology. He has focused his drug discovery efforts mainly on new antibiotic development, including corollapyronin A and the darobactins.

“The 2024 Tu Youyou Award Committee members were highly impressed by the truly outstanding past and ongoing contributions of Professor Müller in both microbial natural products isolation chemistry and in biosynthesis, as well as in the development of lead compounds for their potential in treating human diseases, through his global connections with various major funding agencies.” – Prof. Dr. A. Douglas Kinghorn, Chair of the Award Committee

Professor Müller has enjoyed a successful career, becoming the recipient of several major honors. In 2021, Müller was awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation, which is the most prestigious award presented to scientists in Germany. This was followed by the Charles Thom Award of the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology in 2023. Also, he holds the position as an elected member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

The 2024 Tu Youyou Award Committee

The responsibility of selecting the recipients fell to the 2024 Tu Youyou Award Committee. The committee’s chair, Professor A. Douglas Kinghorn, is a leading expert in pharmacognosy and natural products research. His contributions include over 590 peer-reviewed works and book chapters; he has also edited or co-edited 40 scientific volumes.

Alongside Professor Dr. A. Douglas Kinghorn, the 2024 committee included a panel of international experts who carefully considered all nominations within a two-stage evaluation process that included a round table discussion.

The members of the 2024 Tu Youyou Award Committee include: Prof. Dr Angelo Fontana, Prof. Dr. Binghe Wang, Dr. Diana Pinto, Prof. Dr. Hideaki Kakeya, Dr. RuAngelie Edrada-Ebel, Prof. Dr. Thomas Prisinzano, and Prof. Wei Li.

“In summary, it has been a great pleasure and an honor for us, the authors, to serve on the scientific evaluation committee for the 2024 Youyou Award. It is our collective opinion that the exceptional research contributions of Professors Müller and DiMarchi in natural product chemistry and medicinal chemistry, respectively, truly justify their selection as the recipients of this very prestigious honor.” – 2024 Tu Youyou Award Committee.

MDPI celebrates and rewards outstanding research

Highlighted by their exceptional contributions, Professors Richard DiMarchi and Rolf Müller are the upmost deserving recipients of the 2024 Tu Youyou Award.

In an editorial co-authored by the Tu Youyou Awards committee, MDPI has provided a list of selected works by Professor DiMarchi and Professor Müller. Click here to read the editorial.

MDPI remains dedicated to supporting researchers across all disciplines. These awards serve as a source of inspiration and recognition for the talented individuals making outstanding achievements within their fields.

If you would like to learn more about the awards that MDPI offers, click here.