Akira Endo, 74, of Biopharm Research Laboratories in Tokyo was one of the five scientists awarded with this year’s Lasker Awards for their pioneering discoveries.

Dr. Endo won the clinical research award for discovering the first statins, the cholesterol-controlling drugs that are now among the most widely used medications in the world. An estimated 25 million Americans are currently taking statins to treat high levels of LDL or “bad” cholesterol. Back in 1971, he was interested in discovering a natural substance that could block a crucial enzyme involved in the body’s production of cholesterol, which occurs largely in the liver. Cholesterol is a major contributor to coronary heart disease. Therefore, he examined more than 6,000 fungi and purified an enzyme-blocker called mevastatin or compactin.

In 1980, Dr. Endo and his team succeeded for the first time ever to lower the LDL or cholesterol level in the blood by 17 percent. His work did not stop here. He was the one working with the drug giant Merck in developing other statins, one of them being lovastatin (Mevacor) licensed for sale in 1987. 

“Endo ushered in a new era in preventing and treating coronary heart disease. His work has touched millions of people,” the Lasker Foundation said.

Another winner of the Lasker Awards was  Stanley Falkow, an American microbiologist of Stanford University who was honored for greatly expanding knowledge of disease-causing microbes, ranking him as “one of the greatest microbiologists of all time,” the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation said in making the awards. His research was conducted at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Georgetown University, the University of Washington and then Stanford.

Another prize was shared by two Americans and a Briton for their research in tiny ribonucleic acids known as micro-RNAs. They were Victor R. Ambros, 54, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Gary B. Ruvkun, 56, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and David C. Baulcombe, 56, of the University of Cambridge.

“Out here at UMass, we like to think of ourselves as the center of the universe as far as RNA biology but there is a certain truth to that,” Ambros said when receiving his prize.

The $300,000 Albert Lasker medical research awards will be presented Sept. 26 in New York by the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation.