Artemisinin and Artesunate in Cancer Research

Table of Contents

1. What the Presentation Said
2. Sweet Wormwood and Common Wormwood: Two Different Plants
3. From an Old Herbal Text to a Nobel Prize
4. Intravenous Artesunate for Severe Malaria
5. Iron, Free Radicals and Ferroptosis in the Laboratory
6. What Human Cancer Trials Have Reported
7. Artesunate Applied to Human Papillomavirus Precancers
8. Trials Registered on ClinicalTrials.gov
9. Delayed Haemolysis and Other Reported Harms
10. How the Claim Compares With the Research
11. What Is Not Known
12. Connections
13. Key Research Papers
14. Featured Videos

What the Presentation Said

Artemisinin came up briefly, in a passage about antiparasitic medicines being repurposed for cancer. After discussing mebendazole, fenbendazole and ivermectin, the speaker said that a lot of research has been done on antiparasitic drugs against cancer, listing ivermectin, the benzimidazole family, and “artemisinin, which is wormwood”, together with artesunate.

The speaker then said that the clinic gives artesunate for cancer intravenously (into a vein) and that patients tolerate it very well. Before this list, the speaker had described three general ways antiparasitic drugs are thought to act on tumours: changing tumour signalling, disrupting the cell's internal scaffolding (microtubules), and affecting the immune system and the tissue around a tumour.

No study of artemisinin or artesunate in cancer was named, no cancer type, dose or schedule was given, and no outcome figures were presented for this drug. The presentation moved straight on to the quinine family and then to ivermectin. This page therefore tests three things the presentation said or implied: that artemisinin “is wormwood”, that there is a body of anti-cancer research on these drugs, and that intravenous artesunate is very well tolerated.

Sweet Wormwood and Common Wormwood: Two Different Plants

“Wormwood” is a common name shared by several plants of the genus Artemisia, and the two most often confused are quite different herbs.

• Sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua, also called sweet Annie, or qinghao in Chinese) is an annual herb. It is the plant from which artemisinin is extracted for medicine. The Nobel Committee's 2015 press release describes Tu Youyou's team finding the active compound in an extract of Artemisia annua.
• Common wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) is the bitter herb of the spirit absinthe. A review of absinthe describes it as the drink's main herbal component and notes that it contains thujone, a toxic monoterpene (a small aromatic plant chemical) (Lachenmeier and colleagues, 2006).

Saying that artemisinin “is wormwood” therefore blurs two points. Artemisinin is a single purified compound, not a plant. And the plant it is taken from is sweet wormwood, not the common wormwood sold as an absinthe or digestive herb.

The picture is not completely black and white. A laboratory survey of fifteen Artemisia species growing in northern Pakistan measured artemisinin by high-performance liquid chromatography. It found the highest levels in the leaves (0.44%) and flowers (0.42%) of sweet wormwood. Common wormwood was among ten species with much lower levels, in the range of 0.05% to 0.15% (Mannan and colleagues, 2010). That survey reported, in the same paper, that drug artemisinin is obtained from Artemisia annua. A common-wormwood tea or tincture is a different product from the purified drug, with a different chemistry, including the thujone that sweet wormwood is not known for.

Neither herb is the same as artesunate. Artesunate is a semi-synthetic derivative: chemists start from artemisinin and modify it so it dissolves in water and can be injected (Wang and colleagues, 2024).

From an Old Herbal Text to a Nobel Prize

By the late 1960s, malaria parasites had become resistant to chloroquine and quinine across much of the world. According to the Nobel Committee's press release, Tu Youyou, working in China, turned to traditional herbal medicine and screened herbal remedies in malaria-infected animals. An extract of Artemisia annua stood out, but its results were inconsistent. She went back to the ancient literature, found clues on how to extract the active component, and was the first to show that this component, later named artemisinin, was highly effective against the malaria parasite in infected animals and in people.

The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was divided: one half to William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura for the roundworm drug that became ivermectin, and the other half to Tu Youyou “for her discoveries concerning a novel therapy against Malaria”. The press release states that artemisinin used in combination therapy is estimated to reduce malaria deaths by more than 20% overall and by more than 30% in children. Tu Youyou published her own account of the discovery in 2011 (Tu, 2011).

The prize was awarded for malaria. Neither the Nobel citation nor the press release mentions cancer.

Intravenous Artesunate for Severe Malaria

Intravenous artesunate is not an experimental drug. In severe malaria it is the treatment the major guidelines use first, and it earned that place in two large randomised trials against the older injectable drug, quinine.

The two large trials

• Adults and children in Asia (SEAQUAMAT, 2005). 1,461 hospital patients with severe falciparum malaria in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia and Myanmar were randomly assigned to intravenous artesunate (2.4 mg per kg of body weight at 0, 12 and 24 hours, then daily) or intravenous quinine. Deaths were 15% (107 of 730) with artesunate and 22% (164 of 731) with quinine, a relative reduction of 34.7%. Quinine caused more low blood sugar (Dondorp and colleagues, 2005).
• African children (AQUAMAT, 2010). 5,425 children under 15 in nine African countries were randomised. In hospital, 8.5% of the artesunate group died compared with 10.9% of the quinine group, a relative reduction of 22.5%. Coma, convulsions and worsening coma scores were also less frequent with artesunate, and the authors reported no serious drug-related adverse effects (Dondorp and colleagues, 2010).

The United States label

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved artesunate for injection in 2020 (the label states “Initial U.S. Approval: 2020”). The label indicates it for the initial treatment of severe malaria in adults and children, always followed by a full course of an oral antimalarial. The labelled dose is 2.4 mg per kg intravenously at 0, 12 and 24 hours, then once a day. A review of malaria care in the US describes intravenous artesunate as first-line therapy for severe malaria (Daily and colleagues, 2022).

The label has no cancer indication. Every use of artesunate against cancer, by any route, is outside its approval and is the subject of research rather than an established treatment.

Iron, Free Radicals and Ferroptosis in the Laboratory

Artemisinin's structure contains an unusual “peroxide bridge”, two oxygen atoms bonded to each other inside the molecule, which reviews describe as essential to its activity (Hu and colleagues, 2022). When this bridge meets iron, it breaks apart and releases reactive molecules (free radicals) that damage nearby proteins and fats. Malaria parasites live inside red blood cells and digest haemoglobin, which is rich in iron, so the drug is activated exactly where the parasite lives.

Cancer researchers noticed that many cancer cells also take up more iron than normal cells, and asked whether artemisinin could exploit the same weakness. Reviews of the laboratory literature describe many proposed effects on tumour cells: oxidative stress, DNA damage, cell-cycle arrest, blocking the growth of new blood vessels (angiogenesis), interference with growth-signalling pathways, and several forms of cell death (Efferth, 2017).

Ferroptosis

Ferroptosis is a form of programmed cell death that is driven by iron and by the oxidation of the fats in cell membranes (lipid peroxidation). Several reviews now treat artemisinin and its derivatives as ferroptosis inducers (Wang and colleagues, 2024).

• In cell culture and in a mouse model, dihydroartemisinin (the active form artesunate turns into in the body) broke down ferritin, the cell's iron-storage protein. This raised free iron inside cancer cells and made cells that had resisted ferroptosis more sensitive to it (Chen and colleagues, 2020). The authors proposed the effect as a way to strengthen future ferroptosis-inducing therapies, not as a stand-alone treatment.
• In cell culture and mice, artemisitene, a related compound from Artemisia annua, triggered a calcium-dependent form of ferroptosis in colorectal cancer cells (Zhu and colleagues, 2026).

These are laboratory findings, in cells and in mice. They explain why researchers became interested, but they do not show that the drug shrinks tumours or extends life in people. A major review called artemisinin-type drugs “at the stairways to the clinics” — that is, still at the early clinical stage (Efferth, 2017).

What Human Cancer Trials Have Reported

A systematic review of artesunate outside malaria, covering studies in people from 2008 to 2017, concluded that the studies did not settle whether artesunate or related drugs work against cervical, breast, colorectal or lung cancer, and that further human trials were needed (Raffetin and colleagues, 2018). The individual trials below are small and early-phase.

Colorectal cancer before surgery (oral artesunate)

A single-centre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled pilot trial in the United Kingdom gave 23 patients awaiting surgery for bowel cancer either 14 daily doses of oral artesunate (200 mg) or a placebo (Krishna and colleagues, 2015). Twenty patients completed the trial as planned.

• The main outcome was the proportion of patients in whom more than 7% of tumour cells were dying by apoptosis. This was seen in 67% of the artesunate group and 55% of the placebo group.
• Using a Bayesian analysis, the authors estimated a probability of 0.89 that artesunate reduced Ki67, a marker of dividing cells, in the tumour.
• During a median follow-up of 42 months, the cancer returned in 1 patient in the artesunate group and 6 in the placebo group. This was a secondary observation in a pilot trial of 20 patients, and it was the reason a larger trial was planned.

That larger trial (NeoART) is described in the ClinicalTrials.gov section below; no results from it were found.

Metastatic breast cancer (oral artesunate added to standard treatment)

An open, uncontrolled phase I study in Germany gave 23 women with metastatic breast cancer 100, 150 or 200 mg of oral artesunate a day for four weeks, on top of their guideline-based cancer treatment (von Hagens and colleagues, 2017). Three patients had six dose-limiting adverse events possibly related to artesunate (low white-cell counts, low neutrophils, weakness and anaemia). The authors judged up to 200 mg a day safe and well tolerated for further trials. The study measured safety, not whether the cancer shrank. A separate hearing study within the same trial recorded four patients with possibly related ear symptoms and four with vertigo, one classed as serious, which resolved after the drug was stopped (König and colleagues, 2016).

Advanced solid tumours (intravenous artesunate)

The only intravenous cancer trial found was a phase I dose-escalation study in the United States in 19 patients with advanced solid tumours who had already received other treatment (Deeken and colleagues, 2018). Artesunate was given on days 1 and 8 of a 21-day cycle at doses from 8 to 25 mg per kg — several times the 2.4 mg per kg malaria dose.

• Dose-limiting toxicities included grade 4 neutropenic fever (fever with very low infection-fighting white cells), a grade 3 allergic (hypersensitivity) reaction, grade 3–4 liver-test abnormalities, and grade 3 nausea and vomiting.
• The maximum tolerated dose on that schedule was 18 mg per kg.
• No tumour responses were seen. Four of 15 evaluable patients had stable disease, three of them for 8 to 11 cycles. The authors described this as modest activity and the treatment as well tolerated at the maximum tolerated dose.

Artesunate Applied to Human Papillomavirus Precancers

The most active area of human research is not swallowed or injected artesunate at all, but artesunate placed directly on precancerous lesions caused by human papillomavirus (HPV). These are changes in the lining of the cervix, vulva or anus (graded 2 or 3 when more advanced) that can progress to cancer. In this setting the drug is used to make abnormal tissue regress, which is different from treating an established cancer.

• Cervical precancer (CIN2/3). In a first-in-human phase I dose-escalation study in the US, 28 women used artesunate vaginal inserts for one, two or three five-day cycles before their planned standard surgery at week 15. Side effects were mild and short-lived. In 19 of 28 women (67.9%) the lesion had regressed to CIN1 or less on the surgical specimen, and in 9 of those 19 the human papillomavirus types found at the start had cleared (Trimble and colleagues, 2020). The trial had no placebo group.
• Vulvar precancer (VIN2/3). In a phase I trial of artesunate ointment in 15 patients, there were no grade 3 or 4 adverse events; burning was the most common side effect (93.3%). The response rate was highest in the three-cycle group, at 88.9%, with 55.6% complete responses (Michener and colleagues, 2023). This was also an uncontrolled study.
• Women living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in Kenya. A phase I study of self-administered artesunate pessaries for CIN2/3 found the treatment acceptable to its participants in interviews (Sadana and colleagues, 2026). A randomised, placebo-controlled phase II trial in 120 women living with human immunodeficiency virus is testing the pessaries after thermal ablation, with human papillomavirus clearance at 6 months as the main outcome (Sadana and colleagues, 2025).

These results come from small, uncontrolled phase I studies. A randomised, placebo-controlled phase II trial in the United States (listed below) is the study designed to show whether the regression rates are due to the drug.

Trials Registered on ClinicalTrials.gov

A search of ClinicalTrials.gov for “artesunate cancer” (October 2026) returned 27 records, several of them malaria or COVID-19 studies. The cancer and precancer studies are listed below with their status as recorded on the registry. A status of “unknown” means the record has passed its expected completion date without being verified by the sponsor for more than two years.

Cancer

• NeoART (United Kingdom), NCT02633098. Phase II, randomised, placebo-controlled: 200 mg oral artesunate a day for 14 days before surgery for stage II/III colorectal cancer; main outcome recurrence-free survival at 2 years; 200 participants planned. Status: unknown (last known as recruiting; last update 2022). No results posted, and no results paper was found in PubMed.
• NeoART-V (Vietnam), NCT03093129. The same design in Vietnamese patients; status unknown, no results posted.
• Malaysia, NCT07095309. The same design again (120 participants planned); not yet recruiting.
• Intravenous artesunate in advanced solid tumours, NCT02353026. Completed (the phase I trial described above).
• Oral artesunate in metastatic breast cancer, NCT00764036. Completed (the phase I trial described above).
• Liver cancer (hepatocellular carcinoma), NCT02304289. Phase I; terminated after 2 participants.
• Chronic myeloid leukaemia, NCT07022743. Phase II of artesunate added to imatinib; active, not recruiting.
• Rising prostate-specific antigen (PSA) after prostate-cancer treatment, NCT05478239. Phase II of a coffee preparation containing Artemisia annua; completed, no results posted.

Human Papillomavirus precancers

• Cervical CIN2/3 (United States), NCT04098744. Phase II, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of 200 mg vaginal inserts; main outcome regression by week 17; recruiting.
• Cervical precancer (Kenya), NCT06165614 (phase I, completed) and NCT06519994 (phase II, adjuvant after ablation, completed); no results posted.
• Vulvar HSIL, NCT03792516 (phase I, completed) and NCT06075264 (phase II, recruiting).
• Anal precancer, NCT03100045 (phase I, completed, no results posted) and NCT05555862 (phase II, active, not recruiting).

No registered trial of intravenous artesunate for cancer beyond the completed phase I study was found, and no randomised trial of any form of artemisinin has reported a survival result in cancer.

Delayed Haemolysis and Other Reported Harms

Artesunate has an excellent record in short courses for malaria, but the research describes harms that matter more when it is used in higher doses, for longer, or outside its approved setting.

Post-artesunate delayed haemolysis

Haemolysis means the breakdown of red blood cells. After intravenous artesunate for severe malaria, some patients develop anaemia one to three weeks later, after the infection itself has cleared.

• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration label describes post-artesunate delayed haemolysis as a fall in haemoglobin with laboratory signs of haemolysis starting at least 7 days after treatment begins. It states that cases severe enough to need a transfusion have been reported, and it instructs prescribers to monitor patients for 4 weeks after treatment.
• At a Spanish tropical-medicine referral centre, 4 of the 12 patients followed after intravenous treatment developed delayed haemolysis 9 to 14 days after artesunate. All four had high parasite loads (17% to 33% of red cells infected); all recovered, with a blood transfusion the only extra treatment needed (Aldámiz-Echevarría Lois and colleagues, 2017).
• In a prospective study of 351 children treated with artesunate for severe malaria in Benin, delayed haemolysis occurred in 76 of 332 (22.9%). Severe anaemia between days 14 and 28 was more frequent in these children (10.6% versus 0.4%), as were re-admission to hospital and infections (Carret and colleagues, 2025). The same paper cites a rate of 7% to 25% in adults with severe imported malaria.

In the Benin study, children with delayed haemolysis had higher levels of “pitted” red blood cells — infected cells from which the spleen has removed a drug-damaged parasite — and all the adult cases at the Spanish centre had very heavy infections, which ties the effect to malaria itself. Whether anything similar happens in people without malaria who take artesunate for cancer has not been studied in the same way.

Other reported harms

• Blood counts. Low white-cell and neutrophil counts were dose-limiting in the oral breast-cancer trial, and neutropenic fever in the intravenous solid-tumour trial (von Hagens and colleagues, 2017; Deeken and colleagues, 2018).
• Liver. Grade 3–4 liver-test abnormalities occurred at high intravenous doses (Deeken and colleagues, 2018). A review of artemisinin in cancer reports unexpected cases of liver toxicity when artemisinin-type drugs were combined with complementary and alternative medicines, and advises against such combinations until controlled trials prove their safety (Efferth, 2017).
• Hearing and balance. Possibly related ear symptoms and vertigo in the breast-cancer trial (König and colleagues, 2016).
• Allergy. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration label lists serious hypersensitivity reactions, including anaphylaxis.
• Pregnancy. The label reports embryo-fetal toxicity in animal studies, while also stating that treatment of severe malaria in pregnancy is not to be delayed because the disease itself is so dangerous.

Decisions about cancer treatment and antiparasitic medicines belong with a clinician.

How the Claim Compares With the Research

Supported

• Artemisinin and artesunate are antiparasitic drugs with a large laboratory literature on cancer cells, including iron-dependent cell death (ferroptosis), DNA damage and blocked blood-vessel growth, in cell culture and in mice.
• Artesunate can be given intravenously; in severe malaria, at 2.4 mg per kg, it is well tolerated and lowered deaths compared with quinine in two large randomised trials.

Supported only in part

• “A lot of research”: the research is mostly laboratory and animal work. The human cancer trials found are small and early-phase — a 23-patient colorectal pilot, a 23-patient breast-cancer safety study and a 19-patient intravenous dose-finding study. A systematic review found that human studies did not settle efficacy in any cancer.
• “Very well tolerated” intravenously: true at malaria doses for short courses. At the higher intravenous doses tested in cancer, the phase I trial recorded neutropenic fever, an allergic reaction, liver-test abnormalities and vomiting, and saw no tumour shrinkage. Delayed haemolysis after intravenous artesunate is a labelled warning.

Contradicted

• “Artemisinin, which is wormwood”: artemisinin is a purified compound extracted from sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua). Common wormwood (Artemisia absinthium), the absinthe herb, is a different plant that contains thujone and, in one survey, much less artemisinin.

No research found

• Apart from the 19-patient phase I study, no published study of intravenous artesunate in cancer was found, and the presentation gave no outcome data for the intravenous use it described.
• No randomised trial reporting survival, recurrence or tumour response for artemisinin or artesunate in any cancer was found; the larger colorectal trial (NeoART) has not posted results.

What Is Not Known

• Whether oral artesunate before bowel-cancer surgery lowers the chance of the cancer returning. The pilot signal (1 versus 6 recurrences) came from 20 patients, and the larger trials designed to test it have not reported.
• Whether the regression of human papillomavirus precancers seen in small uncontrolled studies is due to the drug, which the placebo-controlled phase II trials are designed to answer.
• Which dose, route and schedule, if any, would reach the concentrations used in cell-culture experiments without the blood-count, liver and hearing effects seen in trials.
• How long-term or repeated use affects red blood cells, the liver, hearing and balance in people with cancer, many of whom are also receiving chemotherapy.
• How artemisinin-type drugs interact with chemotherapy, radiotherapy, immunotherapy and the herbal products often taken alongside them; a major review reports liver-toxicity cases with such combinations.
• Whether sweet-wormwood tea or capsules deliver enough artemisinin to matter in cancer; no human cancer trial of the herb itself was found.

Connections

• Cancer and Parasites
• Ivermectin in Cancer Research
• Mebendazole, Fenbendazole and Albendazole in Cancer Research
• Methylene Blue: Parasites, Cancer and Safety
• Malaria and Burkitt Lymphoma
• Artemisia Annua (Sweet Wormwood)
• Artemisinin and Malaria
• Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium)
• Tu Youyou
• Malaria
• Antimalarial Drugs and Artemisinin Combination Therapy
• Severe and Cerebral Malaria
• Colorectal Cancer
• Cervical Cancer
• Human Papillomavirus (HPV)
• Ivermectin

Key Research Papers

1. Tu Y. The discovery of artemisinin (qinghaosu) and gifts from Chinese medicine. Nature Medicine. 2011;17(10):1217-20. PubMed PMID: 21989013
2. Mannan A, Ahmed I, Arshad W, et al. Survey of artemisinin production by diverse Artemisia species in northern Pakistan. Malaria Journal. 2010;9:310. PubMed PMID: 21047440
3. Lachenmeier DW, Walch SG, Padosch SA, Kröner LU. Absinthe--a review. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition. 2006;46(5):365-77. PubMed PMID: 16891209
4. Dondorp A, Nosten F, Stepniewska K, et al. Artesunate versus quinine for treatment of severe falciparum malaria: a randomised trial. Lancet. 2005;366(9487):717-25. PubMed PMID: 16125588
5. Dondorp AM, Fanello CI, Hendriksen IC, et al. Artesunate versus quinine in the treatment of severe falciparum malaria in African children (AQUAMAT): an open-label, randomised trial. Lancet. 2010;376(9753):1647-57. PubMed PMID: 21062666
6. Daily JP, Minuti A, Khan N. Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prevention of Malaria in the US: A Review. JAMA. 2022;328(5):460-471. PubMed PMID: 35916842
7. Efferth T. From ancient herb to modern drug: Artemisia annua and artemisinin for cancer therapy. Seminars in Cancer Biology. 2017;46:65-83. PubMed PMID: 28254675
8. Wang Y, Yuan X, Ren M, Wang Z. Ferroptosis: A New Research Direction of Artemisinin and Its Derivatives in Anti-Cancer Treatment. The American Journal of Chinese Medicine. 2024;52(1):161-181. PubMed PMID: 38328829
9. Hu Y, Guo N, Yang T, et al. The Potential Mechanisms by which Artemisinin and Its Derivatives Induce Ferroptosis in the Treatment of Cancer. Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity. 2022;2022:1458143. PubMed PMID: 35028002
10. Chen GQ, Benthani FA, Wu J, et al. Artemisinin compounds sensitize cancer cells to ferroptosis by regulating iron homeostasis. Cell Death and Differentiation. 2020;27(1):242-254. PubMed PMID: 31114026
11. Zhu L, Tan Q, Wang Y, et al. Artemisitene triggers calcium-dependent ferroptosis by disrupting the LSH-EWSR1 interaction in colorectal cancer. Redox Biology. 2026;89:103950. PubMed PMID: 41337810
12. Raffetin A, Bruneel F, Roussel C, et al. Use of artesunate in non-malarial indications. Medecine et Maladies Infectieuses. 2018;48(4):238-249. PubMed PMID: 29422423
13. Krishna S, Ganapathi S, Ster IC, et al. A Randomised, Double Blind, Placebo-Controlled Pilot Study of Oral Artesunate Therapy for Colorectal Cancer. EBioMedicine. 2015;2(1):82-90. PubMed PMID: 26137537
14. von Hagens C, Walter-Sack I, Goeckenjan M, et al. Prospective open uncontrolled phase I study to define a well-tolerated dose of oral artesunate as add-on therapy in patients with metastatic breast cancer (ARTIC M33/2). Breast Cancer Research and Treatment. 2017;164(2):359-369. PubMed PMID: 28439738
15. König M, von Hagens C, Hoth S, et al. Investigation of ototoxicity of artesunate as add-on therapy in patients with metastatic or locally advanced breast cancer: new audiological results from a prospective, open, uncontrolled, monocentric phase I study. Cancer Chemotherapy and Pharmacology. 2016;77(2):413-27. PubMed PMID: 26793976
16. Deeken JF, Wang H, Hartley M, et al. A phase I study of intravenous artesunate in patients with advanced solid tumor malignancies. Cancer Chemotherapy and Pharmacology. 2018;81(3):587-596. PubMed PMID: 29392450
17. Trimble CL, Levinson K, Maldonado L, et al. A first-in-human proof-of-concept trial of intravaginal artesunate to treat cervical intraepithelial neoplasia 2/3 (CIN2/3). Gynecologic Oncology. 2020;157(1):188-194. PubMed PMID: 32005582
18. Michener CM, Ricci S, AlHilli M, et al. Safety and efficacy of topical artesunate for the treatment of vulvar intraepithelial neoplasia 2/3. Gynecologic Oncology. 2023;178:102-109. PubMed PMID: 37839312
19. Sadana A, Guliam A, Opiyo EA, et al. “When a Thorn Comes Into Your Body, You Must Remove It”. A Socio-Ecological Analysis of the Acceptability of Intravaginal Artesunate as Cervical Precancer Treatment in a Phase 1 Clinical Trial. International Journal of Women's Health. 2026;18:573262. PubMed PMID: 42403515
20. Sadana A, Omoto J, Sorgi K, et al. Feasibility of Intravaginal Artesunate as an Adjuvant HPV & Cervical Precancer Treatment Among Women Living With HIV in Kenya: Study Protocol for a Phase II Clinical Trial. Cancer Control. 2025;32:10732748251374418. PubMed PMID: 40907021
21. Aldámiz-Echevarría Lois T, López-Polín A, Norman FF, et al. Delayed haemolysis secondary to treatment of severe malaria with intravenous artesunate: Report on the experience of a referral centre for tropical infections in Spain. Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease. 2017;15:52-56. PubMed PMID: 27818359
22. Carret V, Sossou D, Yakoubou A, et al. Post-artesunate Delayed Hemolysis in African Children With Severe Malaria: Incidence, Medical Impact and Prevention. Clinical Infectious Diseases. 2025;81(2):389-396. PubMed PMID: 39964912

PubMed Topic Searches

1. Artesunate in cancer: clinical trials
2. Artemisinin and ferroptosis in cancer
3. Artesunate for HPV precancers (intraepithelial neoplasia)
4. Post-artesunate delayed haemolysis

Other Sources

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2. NobelPrize.org. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2015 — Press release. nobelprize.org
3. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Artesunate for Injection, prescribing information (initial US approval 2020). accessdata.fda.gov
4. ClinicalTrials.gov. Phase II Randomised, Double Blind, Placebo Controlled Trial of Neoadjuvant Artesunate in Stage II/III Colorectal Cancer (NCT02633098). clinicaltrials.gov
5. ClinicalTrials.gov. Neoadjuvant Artesunate in Stage II/III Colorectal Cancer in Vietnamese Patients (NCT03093129). clinicaltrials.gov
6. ClinicalTrials.gov. Safety and Effectiveness Study of Pre-operative Artesunate in Stage II/III Colorectal Cancer (NCT07095309). clinicaltrials.gov
7. ClinicalTrials.gov. Phase I Study of Intravenous Artesunate for Solid Tumors (NCT02353026). clinicaltrials.gov
8. ClinicalTrials.gov. Artesunate Vaginal Inserts for the Treatment of Cervical Intraepithelial Neoplasia (CIN2/3) (NCT04098744). clinicaltrials.gov
9. ClinicalTrials.gov. Search results for “artesunate cancer” (accessed October 2026). clinicaltrials.gov

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