Akira Endo (biochemist)
Endō Akira (Japanese远藤 章, Endō Akira, born November 14, 1933 Higashiyuri (now Yurihonjo ), Akita Prefecture) is a Japanese biochemist, former professor at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (English for Tōkyō Daigaku Noko ) and director of the company Biopharm research Laboratories (English for株式会社 バイオ ファーム 研究所, KK Biopharm Kenkyujo ).
Life
Endō graduated from the Faculty of Agriculture, Tohoku University in Sendai in 1957 with a BA and 1967, a Ph.D. in biochemistry. Endō made since 1957 in the research department of the pharmaceutical company Sankyo career. A research led him stay 1966-1968 at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. In 1979 Endō professor (associate professor ) at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Fuchu ( Tokyo Prefecture ), from 1986 as a full professor. After his retirement in 1997, he took over the management of the company Biopharm Research Laboratories in Mitaka, Tokyo Prefecture.
In 2009 he was visiting professor at the Institute of Innovation Research Hitotsubashi University.
Work
Endō tested in the early 1970s for the company Sankyo systematically about 6,000 extracts from various mushrooms. In 1976 he identified a substance with the lab name ML- 236B from Penicillium citrinum, which had a high affinity for HMG -CoA reductase, an enzyme with a key role in the synthesis of cholesterol. In other laboratories, this substance was - has already been isolated under the name of compactin, but had not been followed up, because they had only a small effect on the cholesterol levels of the experimental rats. But Endō showed that ML- 236B, which lowers serum cholesterol in monkeys and dogs whose blood fats are similar to those of humans. In 1980, the substance was first successfully used in people with familial hypercholesterolemia.
Endō led to chemical, biochemical and pharmacological studies of ML-236B and the like other cholesterol lowering agents, which are known under the group name statins today. Statins are among the most important - and most actively traded - drugs in the treatment of coronary heart disease ( CHD).
Among other things, on Endo's work also Michael S. Brown and Joseph L. Goldstein, who were recognized for their research on cholesterol metabolism in 1985 with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine were based.