Dr. Olivier Terrier

Current position : Researcher - Assistant Professor (CR1 CNRS, HDR), I was appointed in 2015 as permanent CNRS researcher in the VirPath Team (Pr Bruno Lina/Dr Manuel Rosa-Calatrava), which is part of the Centre International de Recherche en Infectiologie (CIRI, INSERM U1111, CNRS UMR5308, ENS Lyon & Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1), based in Lyon, France. My current research projects consist to study virus-host interactions at the level of human respiratory epithelium. Another part of my current work is dedicated to the development of innovative approaches to identify/repurpose small molecules of interest in the field of respiratory viruses based on their transcriptional signatures of infection. I am particularly interested in the study of co-infections/superinfections between viruses and bacteria, and I am developing new experimental models for this purpose. Over the past 15 years, I have developed a strong expertise in the study of respiratory viruses, combining virology, molecular and cellular biology approaches, and developing experimental infection models in reconstituted human airway epithelium (HAE). In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, our group set up and published the first model of SARS-CoV-2 infections in HAE, a model that enabled crucial steps to be taken to validate preclinical candidate molecules (Pizzorno et al. cell Rep Medicine 2020; Maissonasse et al. Nature 2020; Pizzorno et al. Antiviral Research 2020).