The American Heart Association president called Dr. Endo’s breakthrough the second-most important drug discovery of the 20th century after penicillin.
Akira Endo, a Japanese biochemist whose fascination with the internal workings of fungi underpinned research that discovered cholesterol-lowering statins in blue mold, a find that revolutionized cardiovascular care and became one of the world’s most widely used drugs, died June 5 at age 90.
In 1966, Dr. Endo took a two-year leave of absence to take a research position at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. He also received a crash course in America’s health problems, including learning the connection between high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease.“I often saw ambulances coming to take elderly people who had suffered a heart attack to hospital,” he recalled from his years living in the Bronx.
The compound from pythium ultimum, a plant fungus, appeared to work in rats, but ravaged their livers., or blue mold, growing on rice. He was close to giving up on the research, he said. But the blue mold produced promising results in chickens, which had replaced rats as the initial test subject. One strain proved effective in shutting down the cholesterol-triggering enzyme with no liver damage. The compound was later renamed compactin, orWhile Dr.
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