DrJosca Schoonejans

Josca Schoonejans, Ph.D., is a Research Fellow working on metabolic disorders in pregnancy, with a specific interest in pregnancy, gestational interventions, obesity/metabolic health, sex differences, adipose tissue biology and the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD).

Dr Schoonejans holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge where she studied the effect of maternal metformin treatment in this model on young and aged offspring, finding age- and sex-specific negative effects on WAT function and cardiometabolic health in metformin-exposed mice. In her postdoctoral work she moved from offspring to maternal health, studying the role of bile acids in pathogenesis of human GDM. Her work showed that serum bile acids are associated with insulin resistance, and increased in GDM in European (but not in South Asian) women, with potential implications for ethnicity-specific precision medicine. During her postdoc she also investigated the role of bile acids and potential therapeutic benefits of ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) on the human myometrium as well as developmental programming through maternal and paternal cholestasis. 

Dr Schoonejans is currently an Imperial College Research Fellow (ICRF) under sponsorship of Prof David Carling at the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences. She is investigating ursodeoxycholic acid as an alternative to metformin for gestational diabetes with respect to offspring outcomes.