Japanese researcher Akira Endo, the discoverer of statins, has died at the age of 90

Japanese microbiologist and biochemist Akira Endo, discoverer of statins, these drugs which revolutionized the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases, died at the age of 90, announced Tuesday June 11 to Agence France-Presse (AFP) of his former collaborators, confirming information from local media.

He died on Wednesday June 5, Keiji Hasumi, a Japanese biochemist whose mentor Mr. Endo had been and who worked with him for a long time, told AFP. “He was a tough and strict person, very perceptive. He could see the hidden essence of things”according to Mr. Hasumi.

Born on November 14, 1933 into a family of farmers in Akita, in northern Japan, Akira Endo was fascinated at a very young age by the effects of mushrooms and other molds on living beings. This passion did not leave him, and at university he devoured a biography of Alexander Fleming, the British doctor and biologist who discovered in 1928 the first antibiotic, penicillin, isolated from a fungus.

In 1957 he joined the Japanese pharmaceutical company Sankyo as a microbiologist, and was interested in lipid metabolism and cholesterol biosynthesis.

Albert Lasker Prize in 2008

From 1966 to 1968 he carried out research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Surprised by the large number of elderly and overweight people in the United States, he realized the importance of developing a drug against cholesterol. Back at Sankyo in Japan, he resumed the study of his mushrooms and molds, convinced that they harbor the secret to blocking enzymes participating in cholesterol biosynthesis.

The researcher spent two years screening the chemical compounds of 6,000 fungal strains to try to confirm his hypothesis. Until its discovery, in 1973, of mevastatin, the first representative of the class of statins whose capacity to reduce the level of LDL, the “bad cholesterol”, in the blood would subsequently be proven. But the pharmaceutical company Sankyo (today Daiichi Sankyo) missed the boat and it was not until 1987 that the American laboratory Merck & Co launched the first commercial statin, lovastatin.

More than 200 million people worldwide take this type of medication, the market for which is worth around 15 billion dollars (14 billion euros).

In the wake of their massive prescription, controversies over their possible harmfulness or ineffectiveness have multiplied in many countries, which has discouraged many patients from taking these treatments. However, according to a meta-analysis published in 2022 in the European Heart Journaltaking into account 176 studies on the subject and based on data from four million patients, intolerance to statins would be overestimated.

Akira Endo had received numerous awards for his pioneering work, including the Albert Lasker Prize for clinical medical research in 2008.