Endo finally began screening fungi in April 1971. He tested just over six thousand species. In the summer of 1972, one sample lit up his system—what drug developers call a “hit.” A blue-green mold, discovered growing on rice in a grain store in Kyoto, blocked a key enzyme needed to make cholesterol. The mold was Penicillium citrinum, the same genus that produced penicillin, but a different species. Within a year, Endo extracted the molecule that lowered cholesterol. He called it ML-236B. The drug is now known as mevastatin. It is the seed—the original—from which sprang Lipitor, Zocor, Crestor,
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