Dr Hager Kowash

Overview

I completed my undergraduate degree in Medical Sciences from the University of Leeds in 2012 followed by a Masters in Reproductive and Developmental Biology from Imperial College London. My particular research interests include fetal programming, placental biology and the developmental origins of disease.My PhD project, completed in December 2019, investigated how stress during pregnancy eliciting a maternal immune activation response can lead to the propensity of offspring to develop neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) such as schizophrenia in later life. My project focussed on in utero responses, aiming to determine and understand the placenta’s response to maternal immune activation and its subsequent role and interaction with the developing fetal brain to investigate the potential mechanisms that underlie the development of NDDs in later life with a particular emphasis on placental and yolk sac amino acid transport systems. Currently, I am working on developing potential dietary therapeutic interventions to treat pregnancy complications such as fetal growth restriction in a mouse model as a post-doctoral research associate in the lab of Dr. Elizabeth Cottrell at the University of Manchester, based at the Maternal and Fetal Health Research Centre, St. Mary's Hospital.