Akira Endo Lasker Awards for medical research

5 Pioneering Scientists Win Lasker Medical Prizes

Akira Endo, a Japanese scientist whose discovery of the first cholesterol-lowering statin drug helped extend the lives of millions of people, is one of five winners of this year’s Lasker Awards for medical research, it was announced Saturday.

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Dr. Endo went on to identify other statins, and his work led the American pharmaceutical company Merck to start a program to develop them as drugs.

Merck manufactured lovastatin (Mevacor), the first statin to be licensed, in 1987. Since then, statins have become among the most widely prescribed drugs in the United States, taken by an estimated 25 million Americans to treat high levels of LDL cholesterol

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