Endo, Akira

Since Johann Lobstein first coined the term arteriosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries in 1833, to the Framingham Study which began in 1948 (42), to the isolation of mevastatin by Akira Endo in 1976 (43), and on to the publication of the Scandinavian Simvastatin Survival Study (4S) in 1994 (44), cholesterol levels have emerged as perhaps the most potent modifiable risk factor in the treatment of chronic ischemic heart disease. Genetic disorders such as homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia where severe atherosclerosis is present by early adolescence have helped clarify the importance of LDL cholesterol in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. 

In 1985, Michael S. Brown and Joseph Goldstein won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work in cholesterol metabolism. It was only in January of 2006 that Endo received the Japan Prize, considered by many to be equivalent to the Nobel Prize. There is no doubt that millions of people whose lives have been—and will be—extended through statin therapy owe their longevity to Akira Endo. 

Mevastatin (compactin) and lovastatin (mevinolin) are fungal fermentation products naturally produced by certain higher fungi. Mevastatin was first isolated by Akira Endo and co-workers in the 1970s from Penicillium citri-num Lovastatin is produced by Pleurotus ostreatus (oyster mushroom) and closely related to Pleurotus spp. as well as to Monascus purpureus (Chinese red yeast rice). Both mevastatin and lovastatin have a powerful inhibitory effect on HMG-CoA reductase. Discovered in the 1970s, they were taken into clinical development as potential dmgs... 

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