Iñaki Comas

Professor Iñaki Comas is Head of the Tuberculosis Genomics Unit at the Biomedicine Institute of Valencia belonging to the Spanish National Research Council. Dr. Comas did his PhD at the University of Valencia on Evolutionary Genomics of bacteria. In 2008, he moved to Dr. Sebastien Gagneux’s laboratory in the National Institute for Medical Research in London.

His team was among the first to use genome sequencing in large scale to address issues related with host-pathogen interaction, evolution and drug resistance in tuberculosis. Prof. Comas coordinates regional, national and international funding including an ERC Starting and Consolidator Grant focusing on tuberculosis transmission. Current projects at the Tuberculosis Genomics Unit (http://tgu.ibv.csic.es/) cover basic, applied and clinical/translational research with major focus on transmission and drug resistance of tuberculosis including development of evolutionary approaches to identify pathogen genomic derterminants (PNAS 2022), genomic epidemiology studies to delineate transmission (PlosMedicine 2019) or approaches to whole genome sequence from sputum samples (TheLancetMicrobe 2020). Recent efforts in the laboratory focus on the profiling of transmission accross clinical settings and the quantification of the role of sublinical disease transmission. In addition, his group has led the SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance efforts in Spain leading a consortium of more than 40 clinical and research institutions. Iñaki Comas is also the head of the CSIC Global Health Platform which coordinates the work of more than 100 research groups accross the country to develop new approaches, from therapeutics to societal changes, to fight infectious diseases.