Discovery and development of statins walls of people that died from occlusive vascular diseases, like myocardial infarction. The cholesterol was found to be responsible for the thickening of the arterial walls and thus decreasing the radius in the arteries which leads in most cases to hypertension and increased risk of occlusive vascular diseases. In the 1950s the Framingham heart study led by Dawber revealed the correlation between high blood cholesterol levels and coronary heart diseases. Following up from that study the researchers explored a novel way to lower blood cholesterol levels without modifying the diet and lifestyle of subjects suffering with elevated blood cholesterol levels.
Lovastatin the β-hydroxy acid open ring form; which is the active form. Lovastatin and other statins have been studied for their chemopreventive and chemotherapeutic effects. No such effects were seen in the early studies. More recent investigations revealed some chemopreventive and therapeutic effects, for certain types of cancer, especially in combination of statins with other anticancer drugs. It is likely that these effect are mediated by the properties of statins to reduce proteasome activity, leading to an accumulation of cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors p21 and p27, and to subsequent G-phase arrest, as seen in cells of different cancer lines. Compactin and lovastatin,