Unending saga of fighting cholesterol: Evacetrapib is another fallen warrior

Despite an enormous success in reducing morbidity and mortality in cardiovascular disease (CVD), statins and modern antihypertensive medications are not universally effective. Research has focused on potential molecular targets in dyslipidemia. Decades-long, expensive trial with CETP (cholesterylester transfer protein) inhibitor evacetrapib, came in April 2016 to crash landing. Despite dramatic improvement in "good" HDL-cholesterol and decline in "bad" LDL-C, the effect of evacetrapib in CVD patients was comparable to placebo. Notwithstanding failure in this molecular target field, results with another agent the PCSK9 inhibitor, may identify the molecular site that would normalize dyslipidemia, without harming physiologically essential lipids (Fig. 2, Ref. 19).