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Statin, gene, microbe research has impact
Published on Sunday, Sep 14, 2008
Associated Press
NEW YORK: A Japanese scientist whose breakthrough research led to the most popular cholesterol drugs and four other scientists who made pioneering discoveries have won prestigious medical prizes.
The $300,000 Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards will be presented Sept. 26 in New York by the Albert & Mary Lasker Foundation.
Akira Endo, 74, of Biopharm Research Laboratories Inc. of Tokyo won the clinical research award for discovering the first of the statins, the cholesterol-controlling drugs that are now among the most widely used medications in the world.
Endo's work inspired others, and in 1987 a similar drug (called lovastatin or Mevacor) was the first statin to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
''Endo ushered in a new era in preventing and treating (coronary heart disease),'' the Lasker Foundation said. ''His work has touched millions of people.''
The Lasker prize for basic medical research is shared by three scientists: Victor Ambros, 54, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester; David Baulcombe, 56, of the University of Cambridge in England, and Gary Ruvkun, 56, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School.
They discovered that molecules called microRNAs can control the activity of genes in plants and animals. People appear to have between 500 and 1,000 kinds of microRNAs that altogether might control one-third of the human genes, the foundation said. They play roles in embryonic development and muscle function as well as cancer, heart disease and viral infections, the foundation said.
The prize for special achievement in medical science was given to Stanley Falkow, 74, of the Stanford University School of Medicine. He was cited for ''a 51-year career as one of the great microbe hunters of all time.''
Get the full article here.

