The Perinatal Pharmacology Group

The perinatal period represents a critical developmental window during which the health and wellbeing of future generations is laid down. Led by Dr Adeniyi Olagunju, research within the Perinatal Pharmacology Group is focused on broadening our understanding of drug safety and efficacy during pregnancy and lactation. Working across three domains (human-relevant in vitro modelling, in silico modelling and clinical research), our goal is to generate actionable knowledge that will facilitate early recommendations for safe use of long-acting medicines during the perinatal period.

Group lead

Dr Adeniyi Olagunju

Adeniyi is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Biochemistry, Cell and Systems Biology. He studied pharmacy at the Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria, Master of Research in Biomedical Science & Translational Medicine and PhD in Pharmacology at the University of Liverpool. He leads a group within CELT Global Health that uses a three-pronged strategy to advance evidence-based recommendations for long-acting therapeutics use in pregnancy and lactation: clinical research, human-relevant in vitro models and physiologically based pharmacokinetic modelling.

Team members

Titilayo Adeosun

Titilayo is the Stakeholder Engagement Coordinator for the Community of Practice for Long-Acting Therapeutics for Maternal and Paediatric Health. She holds degrees in Pharmacy and Public Health and has experience in research support, stakeholder engagement, monitoring, and evaluation.

She previously worked on long-acting reversible contraceptive scale-up programmes within the Clinton Health Access Initiative’s (CHAI) Sexual, Reproductive, Maternal and Child Health portfolio, where she supported uptake performance tracking across CHAI-supported health facilities. At the University of Manchester, she contributed to research on the loss of humanitarian archives and worked as a research assistant on a project examining the history of antimicrobials in low- and middle-income countries, including supporting stakeholder engagement activities.

Shakir Atoyebi

Shakir is a Research Associate within the Perinatal Pharmacology group. He is developing mechanistic models to estimate fetal drug exposure during pregnancy towards better understanding of drug fetotoxocity. He obtained a Bachelor of Pharmacy and Master of Science degrees from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, Nigeria. He is currently completing his PhD studies at the University of Liverpool with the Duncan Norman Research scholarship. For his doctoral studies, he developed physiologically-based pharmacokinetic models to study the disposition of long-acting cabotegravir and rilpivirine during pregnancy. In addition, he explored dosing strategies to overcome drug-drug interactions involving some antiretrovirals in children and pregnant women.

Philip Bediako-Kakari

Philip is a PhD student currently working within the Perinatal Pharmacology Group. He obtained a bachelor's in pharmacology and a master's in pharmacology and toxicology from the University of Liverpool, and is very interested in using computational approaches to predict drug disposition in special populations. He previously worked with the group on his Master's project which focused on using Physiologically-Based Pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models to predict and compare the maternal and fetal drug disposition between different drug formulations. For his PhD, he is working on developing a unified cross-gestational PBPK framework that seamlessly simulates drug disposition of ultra-long-acting therapeutics across pregnancy which will support the evaluation and optimisation of these therapeutics during this period.

Ilenia D’angelo

Ilenia joined the Perinatal Pharmacology Group within the Institute of Systems, Molecular and Integrative Biology, as a Research Technician.

With six years of laboratory experience at The Francis Crick Institute and University College London, Ilenia has built a background in Perinatal studies and Pluripotent Stem Cells. Within the Perinatal Pharmacology Group, Ilenia will facilitate the understanding of drug safety and efficacy during pregnancy, through the generation of a human-relevant in-vitro model.

Salima (Sulaima) El Haj

Salima is a PhD student within the Perinatal Pharmacology Group. She is interested in using mathematical and statistical methods to formulate and solve problems. Her research project explores developing a framework for integrated analysis of clinical pharmacology and real-world data for assessing the safety of medicines during pregnancy. She obtained a Master of Pharmacy degree from the University of Nottingham, a MSc in Applied Statistics and Operational Research from Birkbeck, University of London and a MSc in Public Health in Developing Countries from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has a diverse work experience that includes roles in clinical pharmacy and data analysis in several large health related organisations.

Dr Karolina Radziun

Dr Karolina Radziun is a Postdoctoral Research Associate (PDRA) in the Perinatal Pharmacology Group led by Dr Adeniyi Olagunju at the University of Liverpool. She completed her PhD at the University of Liverpool under the supervision of Dr Marie Yang and Dr David Turner, where she developed advanced human placental models, including placenta-on-a-chip platforms and trophoblast organoids, to study the foetomaternal interface and congenital infections such as human cytomegalovirus (HCMV).

Prior to her PhD, Dr Radziun worked at the Wellcome–MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute in the group of Professor Ludovic Vallier, gaining experience in patient-specific iPSC derivation, organoid systems, and CRISPR-based gene editing for disease modelling.

She is now working on a Wellcome Trust–funded project developing physiologically relevant placental in vitro platforms to investigate drug toxicity and safety during pregnancy, with the long-term aim of improving maternal and foetal health outcomes.

Dr Prajith Venkatasubramanian

Prajith has obtained a Doctorate of Pharmacy and a Masters of Science in Pharmacology and Drug Discovery from Coventry University. He is a Research Assistant / Data Curator within CELT Global Health as a member of the Perinatal Pharmacology Group. Prajith is working on long-acting antiretroviral therapies and antipsychotics. He collects, analyses, and interprets scientific information from peer-reviewed scientific journals, reviewing submissions & conducts independent research, developing documentation for the user community. Alongside this, Prajith is involved in contributing to the development and expansion of initiatives.