So, the other night I met a biochemist from the drug company that sponsored the conference I spoke at on Saturday. We had a meet and greet friday night to acquaint all of the speakers over a drink and we got to talking about some of her previous research. The super short and overly simplistic version is her research group took a big group of mice with Alzheimers and evaluated outcomes as related to different titrations of a broad spectrum of drugs that had already met FDA approval. The interesting thing to me, is that the paper that they ended up publishing from this research highlighted the effects of a common blood pressure medication on the formation of beta-amyloid plaques that are known to be part of the causal mechanism of Alzheimers. I'm studying the same drug for it's remodeling features on cardiac muscle and fibrous scar tissue formation.

On a related note, I really enjoy being able to make these kinds of connections because everyone related to my field, even in the private sector seems to have a pretty genuine interest in the humanitarian and scientific aspects. Our sponsor sent three of their staff for the conference; a vice president of some description, a marketing guy and the head of one of their labs, the biochemist I spoke to in depth. I've always been pretty good at networking, and pragmatically speaking, I have a few good contacts now to get my foot in the door of private sector research if I ever want to leave academia.