She studies hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a heart disease that affects over one in 500 people worldwide. One potential culprit protein in this disease is sometimes mutated in such a way that it gets truncated, misfolds and accumulates harmfully in heart cells. Day’s group, through their research into so-called molecular chaperones — a class of proteins that aid protein folding — has found a small molecule called YM1 that speeds up the breakdown of the mutant protein.