Robert Stowe

Dr. Stowe is a behavioral neurologist based in the UBC Neuropsychiatry Program, focusing on clinical and research aspects of neuropsychiatric genetics, particularly psychotic disorders. He completed his MD at Queen's University, neurology residency at the University of Toronto, and behavioral neurology fellowship at Harvard Medical School. He directed a neurobehavioural unit and program at the University of Pittsburgh for 10 years, and was a founding member of the joint Pitt-Carnegie Mellon University Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition. He moved to UBC in 1999, where he was medical director of the Acute Neuropsychiatric Rehabilitation and Treatment Unit at Riverview Hospital prior to its relocation to Kamloops in 2007.

He is based in the UBC Neuropsychiatry Program and consults to the tertiary provincial inpatient BC Psychosis Unit located at UBC Hospital (BCPP) and the PHSA-run Provincial Assessment Centre for individuals living with intellectual disability or autism and comorbid behavioural and psychiatric disorders. He has served on the Genetic Testing Task Force of the International Society for Psychiatric Genetics, and currently co-chairs the American Neuropsychiatric Association's Neuropsychiatric Genetics Special Interest Group. 

Dr. Stowe is principal investigator on the MAGERS (Metabolic and Genetic Explorations in Refractory Schizophrenia) multi-omics research project involving 50 participants with severe, treatment-refractory psychosis due to schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder recruited on BCPP. Prescilla Carrion, a psychiatric genetic counsellor, is the project co-lead.

Clinical chromosomal microarrays (CMAs), extensive clinical biochemical screening for inborn errors of metabolism associated with psychosis, and deep psychiatric, neurological, medical, and morphological phenotyping were performed at entry, followed by research PacBio HiFi long-read whole genome sequencing (WGS) and DNA base methylation profiling, and Illumina short-read RNA sequencing. Three-generation pedigrees were obtained, and intensive genotype-phenotype correlation was employed to identify rare, predicted protein-damaging exonic variants. Pharmacogenetic reports, and clinically actionable results of CMAs and WGS were returned to primary and family member participants through psychiatric genetic counselling. 28% (14/50) participants had a rare chromosomal or DNA sequence variant curated as pathogenic/likely pathogenic related to their psychosis and/or comorbid neurodevelopmental disorder.