PMXAFRICA - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Global Health at the University of Liverpool
• Scientific Advisory Board Member

Catriona Waitt is a Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Global Health at the University of Liverpool, and has been based at the Infectious Diseases Institute, Makerere University College of Health Sciences since 2014. Her research focuses on drug dosing, efficacy and safety in complex and understudied populations, particularly pregnant and breastfeeding mothers and their infants. Her work draws together clinical trials, observational clinical studies, pharmacometrics, social science and public engagement and involvement. Because of the importance of pharmacometrics to study design and interpretation in these complex populations, her team emphasises continued capacity building in the discipline, including with the launch of the Uganda Chapter of Pharmacometrics Africa in 2021.

Job Titles:

• Chief Executive Officer
• CEO: Pharmacometrics Africa NPC, Basel, Switzerland

Goonaseelan (Colin) Pillai is committed to driving programs that develop scientific capability in low and middle-income countries. A clinical pharmacologist who trained in Durban, South Africa, Colin previously worked at the corporate headquarters of Novartis and Roche in Switzerland. He has a specialist interest in the application of non-linear mixed effects models to pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic data across a wide range of therapeutic areas. In Pharma, he played leadership roles in bringing internal and external acceptance of applying mathematical models to decision making in drug development. His most recent Pharma role involved establishing programs that allowed sharing scientific expertise and infrastructure with researchers and institutions in LMIC. Colin has held teaching, research and management positions at the Universities of Durban-Westville and Witwatersrand. He acquired his clinical and research experience in hospital and community pharmacy and as a consultant with the SA Medical Research Council's Tuberculosis Research program, where he ran a unit conducting Phase 1 clinical trials. Colin continues to maintain active academic links with numerous institutions in Africa including via formal Honorary Professorships and Board Member status. Since November 2017, he is a Senior Advisor on capacity development and training programs for global health to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Job Titles:

• Head of International Relations

Job Titles:

• Pharmacist

Innocent Gerald Asiimwe is a pharmacist who is originally from Uganda. He worked in Uganda and Botswana before pursuing further study in the UK at the University of Liverpool. Here, he obtained an MSc in Clinical Research, an MRes in Biomedical Sciences and Translational Medicine (Biology of Cancer), and a PhD in Pharmacology with a focus on warfarin pharmacogenomics in sub-Saharan Africa. He is currently working as a postdoctoral research associate in Prof Sir Munir Pirmohamed's group at the Wolfson Centre for Personalized Medicine (University of Liverpool) on a project evaluating the relationships between diseases, drugs and their therapeutic targets using existing large-scale data from electronic health records, genome-wide association studies and randomised clinical trials. Innocent aspires to become a leading African pharmacometrician and is an alumnus of the Applied Pharmacometrics Training (APT) 2023 program.

Job Titles:

• Scientific Advisory Board
• Scientific Advisory Board Member

Leon originally trained in chemistry and mathematics at the University of Sydney, Australia before obtaining a PhD in theoretical chemistry at the University of Manchester, U.K. Since 1976 he has been a member of staff of the Pharmacy Department of the University of Manchester, where he teaches both undergraduate and postgraduate students. His major research interests lie in the area of pharmacokinetics. Although having a general interest in the subject as a whole, he has a special interest in modelling and data analysis. He collaborates with members of the pharmacokinetic group in Manchester but also with other scientists in industry and academia throughout Europe. Leon had established a world-wide reputation in the area of population pharmacokinetics, which is evidenced by many invitations to talk at international meetings and within pharmaceutical companies. In addition to his research activities, he has been involved in providing pharmacokinetic training for many scientists through basic and advanced courses in Europe, Asia, Australia and North America. For more than 10 years he has also taught pharmacokinetic courses throughout Africa under the auspices of Pharmacokinetics Africa.

Job Titles:

• Chief Scientific Officer
• Professor

Paolo Denti is a professor of pharmacometrics in the Division of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Cape Town. His work focuses mainly on tuberculosis, HIV, and malaria and involves the use of mathematical models to characterize the relationship between drug dose, concentration, and response, while quantifying the effect of patient characteristics, trial information, and other factors on this relationship. Overall, he aims to achieve quantitative understanding how of how these drugs work, so that we can suggest dose adjustments for treatment optimization and individualization, particularly needed for neglected populations, such as paediatrics and pregnancy.