The opportunity for students to put their names down for drug trials was behind one of the more unusual stalls at the O Week tent city.
ZenTech had "recruiting now!'' signs above their stall at the Otago Museum Reserve yesterday.
Signing were students Katie Fairweather (18) and Tomazina Koppen-Pavlovich (18).
Ms Koppen-Pavlovich said her sister had done the trials in the past.
"She got paid,'' she said.
That was not the only thing that attracted her, however, as participation in the trial was helpful to medical science.
She was not concerned about any health effects from the trials.
A company spokeswoman at the stall said the Dunedin company, which had been in the city for more than 30 years, did clinical trials on anything from cancer drugs to paracetamol.
ZenTech administration manager Linda Folland said the company was at the tent city "just really to get our presence out there - if people are interested in finding out a bit about us, if they want to participate in a study, we have them running all the time, you can pick and choose what you want to do''.
"We're just seeing if people are interested to register to go on our database and, from there, when we start recruiting for our studies, we'll send out a bulk email to everyone on our database to see if they're interested.''
All studies were approved by a health and disability ethics committee, and all advertising was approved, Mrs Folland said.
It was difficult to say how many people underwent drug trials, as some studies used as few as 10, and some as many as 50, she said.
There was a payment, although it could not be an inducement, and was variable, depending on the study.
Participants were not just asked, "Here's a study, do you want to do it?''
"They have to go through quite a vigorous medical process to get through,'' Mrs Folland said.
