Chinese medicine commands a unique position among all traditional medicines because of its 5000 years of history. Our own interest in natural products from traditional Chinese medicine was triggered in the 1990s, by artemisinin-type sesquiterpene lactones from Artemisia annua L. As demonstrated in recent years by us and others, this class of compounds has activity not only against malaria but also against cancer and viral diseases. To translate the experimental results from tumors in vitro and in vivo to the bedside, we will report the compassionate use of artesunate in single cancer patients as well as our efforts to initiate several clinical phase I/II trials in veterinary tumors as well as in human cervix or colorectal carcinoma. These pilot studies have indeed indicated that artesunate is not only useful as an anti-malarial drug, but also exerts activities against cancer and viral diseases. Clinical results will also be presented which shows that artesunate is not only the semisynthetic chemical derivative of Artemisinin, but they are also in herbal extracts from A. annua which are active in veterinary and human tumor patients. Interestingly, the bioactivity of artemisinin and its semisynthetic derivative artesunate is even broader and includes the inhibition of certain viruses, such as human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) and other Herpesviridae (e.g. HSV1 and EBV), HBV, HCV and BVDV. We will also present clinical data on the anti-HCMV activity of artesunate in pediatric organ transplant or cancer patients. References: [1] Saeed M. et al. (2016) Pharmacol. Res. 110:216-226. [2] Efferth T. (2017) Semin. Cancer Biol. 46:65-83. [3] Efferth T (2017) Biochem. Pharmacol. 139:56-70. [4] Efferth T. (2018) Biotechnol. Adv. [Epub ahead of print]