subject: Anfinsen's Pioneering Work [print this page] The importance of Anfinsen's work and that of his followers is the impact it has had on understanding certain diseases that involve the folding of enzymes. Recent discoveries indicate that Alzheimer's disease, cystic fibrosis, mad cow disease, genetic emphysema, and some cancers are all based on some aspect of protein folding gone awry. These folding problems also cause difficulties with the proper naturation of synthetic proteins under development for use as pharmaceuticals. Although Anfinsen could not have known the importance of his discoveries in the 1960s, he was somewhat concerned that the breaking of the genetic code and discovery of the alpha, - helix structure of DNA overshadowed the work on protein and enzyme structure and function. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry (along with American chemists Stanford Moore and William Howard Stein) in 1972 for his pioneering work on the structure of enzymes and the relationship between the amino acid sequence and enzyme function. Anfinsen died in 1995 at the age of seventy-nine.
