Dr. Sarah Howles

Biography

Sarah Howles is an Associate Professor in the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences at the University of Oxford, UK. She is a Wellcome Trust Clinical Career Development Fellow and an Honorary Consultant Urological Surgeon at the Churchill Hospital, specializing in kidney stone disease. Howles studied medicine at the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford from 1999 to 2005 and completed her qualification in the Oxford region, entering a Urology training scheme in 2010. In 2011, she was appointed as a Wellcome Trust Clinical Training Fellow and joined Professor Rajesh Thakker’s research group as a DPhil student, defending her thesis in 2015. From 2015 to 2020, she worked as an NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer in Urology, before taking her current post in 2021. Her research focuses on understanding the pathophysiology of renal stone disease and aims to identify new therapeutic targets for the prevention of kidney stone recurrence, which poses a major clinical and economic health burden. She studies both monogenic and polygenic factors that increase the risk of nephrolithiasis, particularly the calcium-sensing receptor signaling pathway and its mutations. Through large-scale data analysis, her group has identified common causes of kidney stone formation and aims to establish a precision medicine framework for kidney stone disease.

Research Interests