| Abstract: | Artemisinin was first extracted in the 1970s from sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua), which was used for the treatment of malaria in traditional Chinese Medicine for more than 1600 years. Meanwhile the biosynthetic pathway of artemisinin, which derives from terpene‐metabolism is well established. In the past 30 years numerous total syntheses have been published, which impressively illustrate the achievements in modern organic chemistry. Nowadays, on industrial scale artemisinin is produced by extraction from wormwood and by fermentation and partial synthesis. |
