Statin Therapy

Statin therapy lowers blood cholesterol by inhibiting HMG-CoA reductase, an enzyme the liver uses to make cholesterol. The Japanese biochemist Akira Endo, working for the Sankyo pharmaceutical company, reasoned that some microorganisms might produce enzyme inhibitors of this kind to defend themselves against competitors, and in 1971 identified the first such compound, mevastatin, from the fungus Penicillium citrinum; a British group independently isolated the same compound (as compactin) from Penicillium brevicompactum and published in 1976. Merck researchers isolated a related compound, lovastatin, from Aspergillus terreus, and it became the first statin approved for sale, marketed as Mevacor from 1987. Endo did not profit from his original discovery, but received the 2006 Japan Prize and the 2008 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award; fellow Nobel laureates Michael Brown and Joseph Goldstein said that the millions of people whose lives will be extended through statin therapy owe it all to Akira Endo.