Japanese biochemist who discovered cholesterol-lowering statins, Akira Endo, dies at 90
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Biochemist Akira Endo tested thousands of microbes to get to his 1973 discovery of mevastatin, which reduces bad cholesterol.
PHOTO: AFP
Follow topic:
TOKYO – Japanese biochemist Akira Endo, who discovered cholesterol-lowering statins, has died, his former student and colleague said on June 11. He was 90.
Statins, which can prevent heart attacks or strokes
Dr Keiji Hasumi, a professor and a long-time associate, said Dr Endo died on June 5.
“His work was truly great. Statins didn’t exist before Endo,” Dr Hasumi said. “It has the same value and impact as the discovery of penicillin.”
Johns Hopkins Medicine says more than 200 million people take statins. Studies say the global market for them was worth US$15 billion (S$20 billion) in 2023 and is expected to grow.
Dr Endo experimented on thousands of microbes to get to his 1973 discovery of mevastatin – an agent derived from penicillin that reduces so-called bad cholesterol in the blood.
Dr Endo “was a tough, strict person”, said Dr Hasumi.
“He was insightful and perceptive, and able to see the hidden essence of things,” he added.
Dr Endo was born in 1933 to a farming family in rural northern Japan.
His ambitions began early thanks to his grandfather, who was interested in medicine and became a “great home teacher”, Dr Endo said in a 2008 autobiographical essay.
As a student, Dr Endo became interested in antibiotics like penicillin, “deeply impressed” by how many lives they had saved.
Dr Endo carried out research in New York in the late 1960s, when coronary heart disease was the main cause of US deaths.
“I often saw ambulances coming to take elderly people who had suffered a heart attack to hospital”, which “made me realise the importance of developing a cholesterol-lowering drug”, he said.
Dr Endo worked at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, which issued a statement expressing condolences over his death, and at Japanese drugmaker Sankyo, now a part of Daiichi-Sankyo.
He spent two years testing 6,000 strains of microbes in the search for a new drug that could help achieve his goal before finally finding mevastatin.
Conflicting reports on the benefits and potential harms of statins in recent years have prompted some people prescribed the drugs to stop taking them.
“Are statins safe? For most people, the answer is a resounding, ‘Yes!’,” Johns Hopkins said in a 2014 meta-analysis of 20 years’ worth of published research.
Dr Endo was a strong candidate for a Nobel Prize, but never won.
In a report on his death, Japanese broadcaster NHK noted Dr Endo received other accolades, including being honoured as a Person Of Cultural Merit by Japan’s government in 2011.
His discovery “was the result of many twists and turns”, Dr Hasumi said.
“He reached his goal by overcoming so many challenges, without which medicines cannot be created, I think I remember him saying.” AFP
