Professor, Director of Cystic Fibrosis Research Center
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Birmingham, AL
Dr. Rowe is a respected academic physician scientist – a pioneer in the field of personalized therapeutics for CF, cutting-edge discovery in airway disease biology, and translational research in COPD. He is an international authority in the design and conduct of clinical trials targeting the basic CF defect, and has made key advances in the measurement and interpretation of CFTR function in humans and animals. In a related effort, Dr. Rowe has advanced both the molecular and clinical understanding of suppression of premature termination codons, representing an exciting strategy for treatment of genetic diseases caused by nonsense mutations, which is responsible for ~10% of all genetic diseases. Dr. Rowe has discovered that COPD patients exhibit ‘acquired CFTR dysfunction’ through a pathway that causes delayed mucociliary clearance and confers chronic bronchitis. The approach establishes how a single gene in a rare disorder can contribute to the 3rd leading cause of death and has led to new efforts by his group to evaluate CFTR modulators in patients with chronic bronchitis, potentially leading to a new paradigm for COPD treatment. Dr. Rowe co-invented one-micron resolution optical coherence tomography that captures 3D imaging in real-time at the cellular level. The technique is highly sensitive to the epithelial function of airway tissues and can provide simultaneous and non-invasive measurements of the functional microanatomy of the airway surface, significantly advancing our understanding of airway disease pathogenesis. Successful miniaturization provides the first in vivo measurements of epithelial function, which has the potential to be revolutionary for the field.
Dr. Rowe is a Professor with tenure in the Departments of Medicine (Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine), Pediatrics (Pediatric Pulmonology), and Cell Developmental and Integrative Biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). He is also the Director of the Gregory Fleming Cystic Fibrosis Research Center at UAB, which involves over 100 faculty members and has been continuously funded for over 25 years. Dr. Rowe is board certified in Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Pulmonary Medicine and Critical Care Medicine and serves as a Special Consultant for Translational Science for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. He received his M.D. degree from Vanderbilt University, and Residency and Fellowship training at UAB, followed by his Master’s Science degree in Public Health (Clinical Research), also at UAB. He presently has a laboratory of over 25 individuals, embracing lung research from basic discovery, to translational science, to clinical application.
Disclosure: Astra Zeneca: Grant/Research Support
Bayer: Grant/Research Support
Celtaxsys: Consultant, Grant/Research Support
Ionic: Grant/Research Support
ProQR: Consultant, Grant/Research Support
Synedgen: Grant/Research Support
Translate Bio: Grant/Research Support
Vertex: Consultant, Grant/Research Support
Thursday, October 3
1:45 PM – 2:10 PM