Pascal BARBRY

About

Pascal Barbry is Director of Research at the CNRS and holds the Chair “Human Lung Cell Atlas” at 3IA Côte d’Azur. He graduated from the École Polytechnique and completed his PhD in Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology at the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis. He was a Visiting Scientist at the University of California, San Francisco (Cardiovascular Research Institute) earlier in his career, working on epithelial ion transport (Dalemans, 1991; Gribkoff 1994; Lingueglia 1993,1994). He has created and led since 1999 the Genomic Physiology of Eukaryotes research group at the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology (IPMC, CNRS–Université Côte d'Azur). His team combines cutting‑edge genomics, single‑cell and spatial transcriptomics approaches to decipher respiratory biology, lung disease mechanisms, and epithelial physiology. He contributed to establish the first version of the human lung cell atlas (Revinski, 20218; Deprez, 2020; Sikkema, 2023). Pascal Barbry is also the creator and head of UCA GenomiX, a genomics platform of France Génomique supporting high‑throughput sequencing, bioinformatics, and epidemiological genomics. In response to the COVID‑19 pandemic, his group pioneered advanced genomic methods for wastewater‑based epidemiology, developing and validating pipelines for SARS‑CoV‑2 detection, variant tracking, and viral diversity analysis in sewage networks (Rios 2021) in collaboration with Veolia and local authorities. This work has provided a sensitive, high‑resolution community‑level picture of viral spread and variant emergence, complementing clinical surveillance. He served as Director of the IPMC (2004–2017), fostering multi‑omic and quantitative biology research, and as President of the Canceropole PACA (2019-2025). Scientific Director of the Institut Hospitalo‑Universitaire (IHU) RespirERA in Nice since May 2024, he also coordinates the Equipex 4D‑OMICS infrastructure project, and chairs the Scientific Council of Vaincre la Mucoviscidose. An internationally scientist, he has authored over 185 peer-reviewed publications with broad recognized impact in genomics, respiratory biology, and epidemic surveillance (h-index 81, source Google Scholar).