(SFGATE) - It began over a glass of good red wine. Paul Muchowski thought he'd found a molecular compound that could slow down the damage done in the brains of people with neurodegenerative diseases. But he didn't know how to get his hands on the compound, which was made by a major pharmaceutical and wouldn't be loaned out without a lot of cost and hassle. So one night, after a family dinner at his parents' home in Sunnyvale, he asked his dad for help. "Paul says, 'Do you think you could make this compound?' And I said any competent chemist could do it," said Joseph Muchowski, now 75, who had decades of experience making drugs and is far beyond "competent" in chemistry. "I made him just under 50 grams