Lovastatin is a well-known natural statin, which is used for lowering plasma cholesterol
levels by inhibiting 3-hydroxy-3-methyl glutaryl coenzyme A reductase. Different strains of
Aspergillus and Monascus sp. have been exploited for statin production but Monascus sanguineus
is still unexplored. In this study, lovastatin production from Monascus sanguineus
under solid state fermentation was optimized using response surface methodology. The
optimized value of the lovastatin yield was 20.04 mg/gds with soybean concentration of
20 g/L, CaCl2 concentration of 2.5 g/L, acetic acid concentration of 25 mL and inoculum size
of 3.4 mL. This study also documented spectrometric characterization and fragment
pattern of lovastatin with the help of Fourier transfer infrared spectrometry and mass
spectrometry. Citrinin was not detected in any of the samples used for this study.