Atherothrombosis, which is linked to heart attacks, strokes and peripheral arterial disease, is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. However, there have been major advances in pharmacotherapy in this field in recent years, and this collection of articles brings together both the research underlying these advances and the latest discoveries that promise to lead to new drugs that can further reduce the burden of atherothrombosis.

Starting in the 1950s, when evidence that elevated concentrations of plasma LDL cholesterol were a important risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease began to emerge, the article by Tobert describes the discovery and development of the first 'statin'. The clinical trials that have laid the foundation for the current leading position of this class of LDL-cholesterol-lowering drugs in treating cardiovascular disease are also discussed.

However, although statins have proved highly successful in reducing the risk of cardiovascular events, it seems that there might be limits to the level of benefit that can be achieved by lowering LDL-cholesterol levels alone. This has led to considerable interest in targeting other lipid-related risk factors, and in their review, Linsel-Nitschke and Tall summarize the evidence for the protective effect of HDL cholesterol and strategies for the development of novel drugs for raising HDL levels.

Assessing and enhancing therapy with both novel and established drugs is also crucial. Here, imaging technologies that can characterize the disease process are becoming increasingly powerful, and Choudhury, Fuster and Fayad consider the potential contribution of these techniques to disease diagnosis and evaluation of the effects of drug therapy on atherosclerotic plaques.

The final article focuses on another pivotal entity in atherothrombosis: the platelet. As Bhatt and Topol highlight, antiplatelet therapies have already made a major contribution to improving outcomes for patients with cardiovascular disease, and new insights are opening the door to novel drugs that target platelets more effectively and safely.

The contents of the atherothrombosis collection, together with related articles from the Nature Publishing Group, are available at the Nature Reviews Drug Discovery Atherothrombosis Web Focus. Thanks to the generous financial support from Pfizer, which has made the production of this collection possible, access to this web focus was provided free until April 2005.