Stefan Kappe to lead Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health
University of Maryland School of Medicine Dean, Mark T. Gladwin, MD, announced today the appointment of distinguished parasitologist and immunologist Stefan Kappe, PhD, to be the new Director of the school’s Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health (CVD). He will also serve as the Myron M. Levine, MD, DTPH Professor of Vaccinology in the Department of Pediatrics.
Kappe is a Professor and the Associate Vice Chair of Basic Science Research in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is also a senior principal investigator at the Center for Global Infectious Disease Research at Seattle Children’s Research Institute where he recently also served as an Associate Director. Dr. Kappe is internationally known for his transformational work in genetic engineering of parasites, which has led to a novel malaria vaccine type that demonstrated the potential to provide a high level of protection against malaria infection in preclinical models and a clinical study. He is also recognized for his landmark research on the early phases of malaria parasite infection in the liver.
He plans to begin his new position early next year; James Campbell, MD, MS, Professor of Pediatrics at the UM School of Medicine, will continue to serve as Interim Director of CVD until that time. He took over in July from Miriam Laufer, MD, who had been serving as Interim Director since April 2024.
Stefan Kappe, PhD
Kappe’s laboratory focuses on understanding the complex pathobiology of malaria parasites and immune responses to infection, with the goal of designing transformational interventions that are more effective than current malaria treatments and vaccines. Along with his research team, he has pioneered functional genomics studies and reverse genetics studies of malaria parasites, laying the foundations for their in-depth biological investigation. They have used this knowledge to develop genetically engineered vaccine strains, which have become leading vaccine candidates and are currently tested in early-stage clinical trials in the US, Germany and Burkina Faso.
Kappe has received more than $34 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other funding sources such as the Gates Foundation since 2003, and he continues to have strong NIH funding support through P01, R01 and U01 grants. His research is focused on developing genetically engineered live-attenuated pathogens to optimize safety and potency against Plasmodium falciparum malaria infection as well the identification of targets of protective immunity for subunit vaccine development. His team also investigates the molecular drivers of Plasmodium vivax, the parasite most responsible for recurrent malarial infections, and its persistence in the human liver to develop potential new therapeutics.
With a significant h-index of 65, Kappe’s research has been cited more than 6,300 times. He has authored or contributed to more than 280 publications, including 24 reviews on the basic science aspects of host-parasite interaction of malaria, pathophysiological and clinical aspects of Plasmodium infection, malaria vaccine development, and humanized mouse models of Plasmodium infection.
“Dr. Kappe has made it his life’s mission to develop a highly effective vaccine against malaria, which due to the limitations of the current immunizations, remains one of the greatest global health problems with hundreds of millions of infections and more than half a million deaths each year in the developing world,” said Dean Gladwin who is also the Vice President for Medical Affairs, at the University of Maryland, Baltimore and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and Dean. “His deep expertise in malaria biology and immunology, combined with his mentorship in basic and translational science, will strengthen CVD’s global leadership in combating malaria, tropical diseases, and emerging pandemics driven by climate change. I want to express my deepest appreciation to Dr. Campbell and Dr. Laufer for serving so adeptly at the helm of CVD until a permanent director could be appointed.”
As part of his role as the Myron M. Levine, MD, DTPH Professor of Vaccinology, Kappe will serve as Vice Chair of Translational Research in the Department of Pediatrics at the UM School of Medicine. He will develop and implement a translational research road map for the Department of Pediatrics and will launch strategies for promoting and growing the department's research portfolio, which will include research collaborations and mentoring. He plans to launch investigative studies focusing on early-life pediatric immunity versus adult life immunity as an important topic for future vaccine development.
“I am thrilled to welcome Dr. Kappe to our Department and expect he will play an integral role in helping to grow our research program and to further our capabilities in interdisciplinary bench discovery for novel pediatric vaccines,” said Steven Czinn, MD, Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the UM School of Medicine.
CVD was the first center in the world to develop controlled human malaria infection studies, providing proof of principle that live attenuated malaria vaccines protect against infection. Faculty have been conducting genome-wide studies of antimalarial drug resistance and have tested monoclonal antibodies for treating malaria. Since CVD was founded more than 50 years ago, CVD faculty, consisting of basic science researchers and physician-scientist clinicians, have worked domestically and internationally to develop, test, and deploy vaccines to aid the world’s underserved populations. They were the first in the country to test the mRNA vaccine against COVID-19 and have created and tested vaccines against numerous infectious diseases including cholera, typhoid fever, paratyphoid fever, non-typhoidal Salmonella disease, shigellosis (bacillary dysentery), E. coli diarrhea, nosocomial pathogens, tularemia, influenza, coronaviruses, malaria, and other infectious diseases.
“I am very honored and humbled to become the new Director of this world class research center to help facilitate the use of genetic advances for urgently needed innovation that will hopefully lead to a new generation of life saving immunizations,” said Kappe. “I am thrilled to be working alongside such leaders in this field and am also eager to recruit and mentor young faculty on their journey to establishing successful, sustainable and collaborative research programs.”
Kappe is a national leader in the vaccine field for his innovative work to genetically engineer live attenuated Plasmodium parasites to develop safer and more effective malaria vaccines. Last year, his lab collaborated with biotechnology company Sanaria to use genetic engineering to develop a novel malaria vaccine, PfSPZ-LARC2. The vaccine demonstrated the potential to provide high-levels of protection against malaria infection, which makes it a promising candidate for a more potent immunization. His work has been cited in prestigious journals such as EMBO Molecular Medicine, Nature Microbiology and Science. The vaccine candidate developed from his work recently had initial clinical trials published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Kappe is or has been a member of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, American Society of Microbiology, American Society for Cell Biology and the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. For his excellence and contributions towards a highly protective malaria vaccine, he has received the Sornchai Looareesuwan Medal, given in recognition of his accomplishments. For his work in malaria research, he has also received the William Trager Award in Basic Parasitology and the Bailey K. Ashford medal awarded at the American Society of Tropical Medicine Meeting in 2016.
He received his PhD in molecular biology and parasitology from the University of Notre Dame and undergraduate degree in biology from the Rheinische-Friedrich Wilhelms University in Germany.
