Biography
Oliver Howes is Head of Department, Psychosis Studies and Professor of Molecular Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London.
His clinical work is as a Consultant Psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital, London, where he runs a team for people with difficult to treat psychotic disorders. This includes helping people where treatment hasn't worked, or with side-effects.
He heads the Psychiatric Imaging Group. The group investigates the neurobiology of major mental illnesses and the development of novel treatments. It focuses on the translation of basic science findings into first in human and early phase clinical studies. The group also investigates how to improve treatment, including implementing novel service approaches, and physical health comorbidities.
He has been named as one the world's leading scientists in both psychiatry and neuroscience by ISI Thompson on the basis of high impact publications over the last decade. His work has been recognised by a number of awards, including the Schizophrenia International Research Society Translational Research Award 2024 and the Robert Sommer Translational Science Award 2025. Faculty 1000 has identified 10 papers as outstanding & Science Watch identified two papers as amongst the top six in psychiatry by citations for the year.
The group’s preclinical work involves the development of novel radiotracers and pharmacological probes to take into human studies and the development of preclinical models of the neurobiology of major mental illnesses.
These include developmental, genetic, and pharmacological rat and mouse models, including sub-chronic ketamine, cocaine and chemogenetic (DREADD) challenges. The group uses a variety of in vivo and ex vivo techniques including behavioural testing, PET imaging in mice and rats with and without blocking agents, autoradiography, confocal microscopy, and immuno-histochemistry.
The group’s human work focuses on experimental medicine studies in patient cohorts and healthy volunteers. Approaches include in vivo imaging with PET, fMRI, and MRS coupled with pharmacological or behavioural challenges. The group uses a number of functional and pharmacological challenge procedures, for example to target the immune, serotinergic, dopaminergic and cannabinoid systems.
In addition the group conducts first in human and first in disorder studies with new drugs and radiotracers, including in vivo validation using blocking agents and pharmacokinetic modelling. This has involved developing novel modelling approaches and methodological developments. The group also conducts studies on imaging and blood based biomarkers for stratification of disorders.