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Who is Magdalena Alonso-Galicia?
Helping People Through Drug Discovery Research


Magdalena Alonso-Galicia was born in Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico. Her health was very frail for the first 6 years of her life. She remembers visiting doctors and hospitals/clinics very frequently. After having a tonsillectomy and other surgeries, her health problems went away. This made her realize that she wanted to help cure people’s diseases. She regarded nurses and clinical lab personnel very highly (they were all so very nice), but she did not like physicians much. Because she loved biology and chemistry classes when she was in high school, she decided that she wanted to help sick people by working in a clinical lab running the assays that help doctors diagnose patients’ illnesses.

Discovering Research
For college, Maggie decided to attend her home town university, the University of San Luis Potosi, Mexico, to pursue a combined degree in chemistry, biology and pharmacy. She enrolled in the program to become an occupational health specialist. As she was working on her degree, she got an internship at a hospital running assays. That was when she discovered that this type of work was not for her. The routine of running the same assays every day was not exciting for her.

After graduation, she 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 physiology. That was when she discovered she loved doing basic research.

Wanting to Learn More
After working for 3 years as a technician, she realized that she needed to learn more in order to understand the experiments she was assigned to do. She was considering entering a graduate program in pharmacology in Mexico. However, her boss recommended that she move to the US to get access to the best education in integrative physiology (that is, research that integrates cardiovascular and renal physiology, also organ or systems physiology; the aim of the 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). This was a research area that he thought would have with a bright future and he was right. He suggested that Maggie aim very high and apply to the best graduate schools in the US that offered cardiovascular and/or renal physiology programs, since she had technical experience in renal physiology.

So she took his advice and was very excited when she got accepted to the graduate program in the Department of Physiology & Biophysics at the University of Mississippi, Medical Center in Jackson, MS. It was especially exciting as this was the department of 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 mentor, Dr. John Hall, and the other faculty in 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
Dr. Alonso-Galicia then accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, WI, where she continued doing research on genetic mechanisms of salt-sensitive hypertension and the role of arachidonic acid metabolites in hypertension. While in the last year of her postdoctoral training, a professor 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 seminar presentation, she got a job offer. Even though she’d always planned to pursue a career in academia and never thought that she would work in a pharmaceutical company, it was an offer she could not turn down because of Merck’s reputation and strong support for basic research in drug discovery. It was a way she could fulfill her earlier desire to help people who had diseases.

Working for a Drug Company
Currently, Dr. Alonso-Galicia is a Senior Research Pharmacologist working in the Department of Cardiovascular Diseases. She does research to support early drug discovery efforts. Her job requires that she stay current in and understand a range of pathophysiological mechanisms that lead to cardiovascular diseases in order to identify novel signaling pathways that are amenable for drug targeting.

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.

Advice for Postdoctoral Fellows
Learn to effectively write grants/scientific communications, continue networking, publish as much as possible, and start making a name in your area of expertise. This will help you whether you decide to stay in academia or go to industry.

Recent Publications
1. Alonso-Galicia, M., K.G. Maier, A.S. Greene, A.W. Cowley, Jr., and R.J. Roman. Role of 20-hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid in the renal and vasoconstrictor actions of angiotensin II. Am. J. Physiol. Regul. Integr. Comp. Physiol. 283: R60-R68, 2002.

2. Kunet, M.P., R.J. Roman, M. Alonso-Galicia, J.R. Falck, and J.H. Lombard. Cytochrome P-450 omega-hydroxylase: a potential oxygen sensor in rat arterioles and skeletal muscle. Am. J. Physiol. Heart Circ. Physiol. 280: H1840-H1845, 2001.

3. Maier, K.G., L. Henderson, J. Narayanan, M. Alonso-Galicia, J.R. Falck, and R.J. Roman. Fluorescent HPLC assay for 20-HETE and other P-450 metabolites of arachidonic acid. Am. J. Physiol. Heart Circ. Physiol. 279: H863-H871, 2000.

4. Alonso-Galicia, M., J.R. Falck, K.M. Reddy, and R.J. Roman. 20-HETE agonists and antagonists in the renal circulation. Am. J. Physiol. Renal Fluid Electrolyte Physiol. 277: F790-F796, 1999.

5. Roman, R.J., and M. Alonso-Galicia. P450 eicosanoids: a novel signal pathway regulating renal function. News Physiol. Sci. 14:238-242, 1999.

6. van Dokkum, R.P.E., M. Alonso-Galicia, A.P. Provoost, H.J. Jacob, and R.J. Roman. Impaired autoregulation of renal blood flow in the fawn-hooded rat. Am. J. Physiol. Regul. Integr. Comp. Physiol. 276: R189-R196, 1999.

7. Alonso-Galicia, M., C. Sun, J.R. Falck, D.R. Harder, and R.J. Roman. Contribution of 20-HETE to the vasodilator actions of nitric oxide on renal arteries. Am. J. Physiol. Renal Fluid Electrolyte Physiol. 275: F370-F378, 1998.

8. Ito, O., M. Alonso-Galicia, K.A. Hopp, and R.J. Roman. Localization of cytochrome P450 4A isoforms along the rat nephron. Am. J. Physiol. Renal Fluid Electrolyte Physiol. 274: F395-F404, 1998.