American scientist Susan Lindquist, Ph.D, was recently awarded the Otto Warburg Medal in Mosbach, Germany. The medal is considered the most prestigious German award for biochemists and molecular biologists, and is awarded by the German Association of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (GBM). Seven recipients of the Otto Warburg Medal have subsequently received the Nobel Prize. This year’s prize was sponsored by QIAGEN.
Dr. Lindquist is member of the Whitehead Institute, professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The award recognised her research into the field of protein folding, allowing a greater understanding of serious diseases like Parkinson’s. “I am very proud to receive the Otto Warburg Medal of the GBM. I also appreciate QIAGEN’s commitment to furthering research in biochemistry and molecular biology by sponsoring this prize,†said Dr. Lindquist.
Proteins are essential components of all organisms and participate in every process within cells. Susan Lindquist has dedicated her research to these biomolecules. One of her important findings is that a dysfunction in the folding of the molecules’ three-dimensional structure can have profound influence on the development of human diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
Lindquist’s wide-ranging investigations in protein folding also have included prions – the so-called small proteinaceous infectious particles. Lindquist investigated how prions form and then trigger diseases such as mad cow and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
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