In 1985, Michael Stuart Brown from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine with Joseph L. Goldstein ‘for their discoveries concerning the regulation of cholesterol metabolism.’

In 1973 Brown and Goldstein discovered the receptor, or receiver, in cells that takes in cholesterol and clarified how the conversion of cholesterol is regulated by our genes and other substances. The discoveries became the basis for statins, medications that reduce cholesterol levels in the blood.