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A gift from nature: the birth of the statins

Nature Medicine volume 14, pages 1050–1052 (2008)Cite this article

I was born into a rural farming family in northern Japan, near Akita, where I lived for 17 years with my extended family, including grandparents, parents, three brothers and two sisters. My grandfather, who had an interest in medicine and science, was a great home teacher to me. Thanks to his influence, at the age of 8, I dreamt of becoming a scientist, much like the renowned Japanese scientist Hideyo Noguchi, who, in 1900 at the age of 24, went to the United States and studied syphilis and yellow fever at the Rockefeller Institute in New York.

After finishing high school in Akita, I entered Tohoku University's College of Agriculture in Sendai in 1953. I excelled in organic chemistry at high school. So, in addition to studying organic chemistry at the university, I also chose biochemistry and applied microbiology as my preferred subjects. At that time, many drug companies and universities in Japan were conducting active research and development in finding effective antibiotics. As a student, I was deeply impressed by the knowledge that antibiotics had saved the lives of many patients with infectious diseases.

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Figure 1: Micrograph of Penicillium citrinum Pen-51, the fungus that produces compactin.
Figure 2: A comparison of the structures of four statins and mevalonate.
Figure 3: Akira Yamamoto's homozygous patient with familial hypercholesterolemia who first received compactin in 1978.

Akira Yamamoto

References

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Acknowledgements

There are too many friends and colleagues who have contributed to this work over the years to name them individually, but special thanks must go to M. Kuroda for his key role in searching for HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors, to N. Kitano for collaborating in evaluating compactin in hens, dogs and monkeys, and to A. Yamamoto, who first gave compactin to a patient with severe hypercholesterolemia. I am greatly indebted to J. Goldstein and M. Brown, whose friendship and expertise have proved so valuable during my career. And finally, I would like to express my deep gratitude to the Lasker Foundation for the honor of being distinguished with such a prestigious award, which I share with all the members of my laboratories at both Sankyo and Tokyo Noko University.

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  1. Akira Endo is at Biopharm Research Laboratories, Inc., 3-41-3 501 Shimorenjaku, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-0013, Japan. aendo@biopharm.co.jp,

    Akira Endo

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Endo, A. A gift from nature: the birth of the statins. Nat Med 14, 1050–1052 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm1008-1050

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