Help Stanford University scientists studying Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's, and many cancers by simply running a piece of software on your computer.

The problems we are trying to solve require so many calculations, we ask people to donate their unused computer power to crunch some of the numbers.

In just 5 minutes ...

Add your computer to over 113,803 others around the world outputting 20,486 teraflops of computing power to form the world's largest distributed supercomputer.

Step 1. Download protein folding simulation software called Folding@home.

Step 2. Run the installation. The software will automatically start up and open a web browser with your control panel.

Step 3. Follow the instructions to Start Folding.

Stanford University will send your computer a folding problem to solve. When your first job is completed, your computer will swap the results for a new job.

What is protein folding?

Proteins are biology's workhorses- its "nanomachines." Proteins help your body break down food into energy, regulate your moods, and fight disease. Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or "fold." While protein folding is critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology much of the process remains a mystery.

When proteins do not fold correctly (misfolding), there can be serious health consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, AIDS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many cancers.

If we better understand protein misfolding we can design drugs and therapies to combat these illnesses.

How you can help right now.

Start Folding by downloading and running the free Folding@home software from Stanford University. Once installed the software runs behind the scenes using otherwise unused computing time.

Your computer's calculations provide us valuable data for our research into protein folding.

You'll get feedback along the way if you want it, or you can just let it run. You might not even notice how much work is going on.

Every computer we add gets us closer to the cures.