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Who is Magdalena Alonso-Galicia?
Helping People by Researching New Drugs


Magdalena Alonso-Galicia was born in Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico. For the first 6 years of her life, she was very sick. She remembers visiting doctors and hospitals very frequently. After having her tonsils taken out and other surgeries, her health problems went away. This made her realize that she wanted a career where she could help cure people’s diseases. She had very high regard for the nurses and lab people in the hospitals (they were all so very nice), but she did not like the doctors much. Because her favorite classes in high school were biology and chemistry, she decided that the best way to help sick people would be to work in a hospital lab running the tests that help doctors diagnose a patient’s illness.

Discovering Research
Maggie decided to attend the college in her home town and get a combined degree in chemistry, biology, and pharmacy. She attended the University of San Luis Potosi, Mexico, to study to become an occupational health specialist. As she was working on her degree, she got an internship at a hospital where she got to run tests, just like she would in a real job. That was when she found out that this type of work was not for her. Having to run the same tests every day was not at all exciting for her.

So, after she got her degree, Maggie decided to try a job as a technician in the Department of Physiology in the local School of Medicine in her home town, doing basic research in the area of renal (kidney) physiology. That was when she discovered she loved doing basic research.

Wanting to Learn More
After working for 3 years as a technician, Maggie decided that she wanted to learn more in order to understand the experiments she was assigned to do. She thought about enrolling in a graduate program in pharmacology in Mexico. However, her boss told her that she should move to the US where she would be able to study integrative physiology. (What do you mean by integrative? Translational research, as in bench to bedside, or more integrating cardiovascular with renal?  I guess translational research integrating cardiovascular and renal physiology, also organ or systems physiology: aim of program was to study organ physiology from molecules to how whole organ systems work in the human body to understand normal body functions with emphasis in pathophysiological mechanisms that lead to cardiovascular diseases.  He thought that integrative physiology was a research area with a bright future, and it turns out he was right. He suggested that Maggie should aim very high and apply to the best graduate schools in the US that offered cardiovascular (heart and blood vessels) and/or renal physiology programs, since she had research experience in renal physiology.

So Maggie took his advice and was very excited when she got accepted into the graduate program in the Department of Physiology & Biophysics at the University of Mississippi, Medical Center in Jackson, MS. It was especially exciting as the chair of this department was Dr. Arthur Guyton, one of the most extraordinary and respected physiologists and scientists of all times. Dr. Guyton was an inspiration for her, but it was her advisor, Dr. John Hall, and the other faculty of the department who introduced her to the exciting world of integrative cardio-renal physiology. Her research was on mechanisms of obesity-induced hypertension. She received her doctoral degree in 1995.

Taking Advantage of Opportunities
After finishing her degree, Dr. Alonso-Galicia went on for more research training (called a postdoctoral fellowship) at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, WI. In the last year of her training, one of the professors at the Medical College of Wisconsin recommended her for a basic research position at Merck Research Laboratories. She applied and, after two rounds of interviews and a giving a talk about her research, she got offered a job. Dr. Alonso-Galicia had always planned to have a career at a college where she would teach and do research and never thought that she would work in a drug company. However, it was an offer she could not turn down because of Merck’s reputation and strong support for basic research in drug discovery. This would be how she could help people with different illnesses.

Working for a Drug Company
Currently, Dr. Alonso-Galicia is a Senior Research Pharmacologist working in the Department of Cardiovascular Diseases at Merck. She does research to help identify possible new drugs at an early stage. Her job requires that she stay current in and understands all the different ways things can go wrong in the body that can lead to cardiovascular diseases. This knowledge helps her figure out where new drugs could be effective in that process.

Away From Work
Dr. Alonso-Galicia loves traveling and meeting people from all over the world. She also likes interior design and decoration, going to the movies, reading, listening to music, aerobics classes, and spending time with her husband and two kittens. She’s considering volunteering at the local animal shelter to help take care of rescued animals.