Pascal Mayer | |
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| Born | (1963-07-14)July 14, 1963 (age 62) |
| Known for | His research paved the way for cheap and rapidDNA sequencing |
Pascal Mayer is a Frenchbiophysicist and entrepreneur specializing in biomolecular analyses for diagnostics,predictive medicine and drug discovery.
He is known for his work that led to the development of a next-generation for an inexpensive and rapidDNA sequencing technology.[1][2][3] that would become the basis ofIllumina technology, and for which he was awarded the 2022Breakthrough Prize in life sciences category. He is currently the president ofAlphanosos.
He was awarded theCanada Gairdner International Award[4] in 2024.
He is the co-founder of Alphanosos, a company in applied AI for sustainable health and bio-industries that develops natural health products based onpatentable mixes of plant extracts.
Pascal Mayer was born in 1963 inMoselle, where he grew up. He graduated in 1988 with a Master's degree (DEA) in Molecular Biology from theLouis Pasteur University[5] ofStrasbourg, where he obtained his PhD in Macromolecular Biophysics in 1991
His thesis was devoted to the development of an automated apparatus for measuring electrical birefringence on gel and to the experimental study ofDNA dynamics during pulsed-fieldelectrophoresis.
From 1991 to 1994, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at theUniversity of Ottawa (Canada) where he demonstrated how a new method for separating DNA in free solution could significantly improve DNA sequencing methods.
During a second postdoctoral fellowship at the Paul Pascal Research Center of theCNRS, from 1994 to 1996, he invented a method and wrote software to analyze video-microscopy images of blurred moving objects (DNA molecules) using spatio-temporal correlation maps.
In November 1996, he joined theGlaxoSmithKline group inGeneva, where his work led to the filing of patents revealing the new method of massive parallelDNA sequencing, subsequently acquired by the British company Solexa created by Shankar Balasubramanian and David Klenerman, whose start-up was ultimately acquired byIllumina.[6] These patents have enabled the creation of a rapid, robust and inexpensive DNA sequencing technique (one day and around $600 for the resequencing of a complete human genome), which is now used on a large scale. In this respect, Pascal Mayer received theBreakthrough Prize in life sciences category in 2022 (alongside these two British scientists)[7] and theCanada Gairdner International Award in 2024.[8] This technology enabled the rapid sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19)[9] in 2020 and the regular monitoring of genetic mutations of the different variants.
In 2014, he co-founded the companyAlphanosos, located inRiom (Auvergne). In his company he has made several developments so far :
Authority control databases: Academics |
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