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Japanese microbiologist and biochemist Akira Endo, inventor statinsthese drugs, which revolutionized the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases, died at the age of 90, one of his former colleagues announced on Tuesday, June 11, to Agence France-Presse (AFP), confirming information from local media.
He died on Wednesday, June 5, Keiji Hasumi, a Japanese biochemist who mentored and worked with Mr. Endo for a long time, told AFP. “He was a difficult and strict person, very perceptive. He could see the hidden essence of things”according to Mr. Hasumi.
Born on November 14, 1933 to a farming family in Akita, northern Japan, Akira Endo was fascinated at a very young age by the effects of fungi and other molds on living things. This passion never left him, and at university he devoured the biography of Alexander Fleming, the British physician and biologist who in 1928 discovered the first antibiotic, penicillin, isolated from a fungus.
In 1957, he joined the Japanese pharmaceutical company Sankyo as a microbiologist, and he was interested in lipid metabolism and cholesterol biosynthesis.
Albert Lasker Award 2008
From 1966 to 1968, he conducted research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Surprised by the large number of elderly and obese people in the US, he realized the importance of developing a drug against cholesterol.
Returning to Sankyo, Japan, he continued to study his mushrooms and molds, convinced that they held the secret to blocking the enzymes involved in cholesterol biosynthesis.
The researcher spent two years examining the chemical compounds of 6,000 strains of fungi to try to confirm his hypothesis. Until the discovery, in 1973, of mevastatin, the first representative of the class of statins whose ability to reduce the level of LDL, the “bad cholesterol” in the blood, was subsequently proven.
But the pharmaceutical company Sankyo (today Daiichi Sankyo) missed the boat and it wasn’t until 1987 that the American laboratory Merck & Co launched the first commercial statin, lovastatin.
More than 200 million people worldwide take this type of medicine, whose market is worth around 15 billion dollars (14 billion euros).
After their mass prescription, controversies surrounding their possible harm or ineffectiveness multiplied in many countries, which discouraged many patients from taking these treatments.
However, according to a meta-analysis published in 2022 European Heart Journalconsidering 176 studies on the subject and based on data from four million patients, statin intolerance would be overestimated.
Akira Endo has received numerous awards for his pioneering work, including the 2008 Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research.
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