Dr. Mariah Hassert, a Postdoctoral Scholar in the laboratory of Dr. John Harty, received a K99/00 Pathway to Independence award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for her proposal “Hemozoin and liver stage malaria vaccine efficacy”.  This award supports up to two years of mentored postdoctoral training and provides up to three years of support during an initial faculty appointment.

Highly effective vaccines are needed to help control the global disease burden of malaria. Candidate vaccines targeting the liver-stage of malaria have shown promising efficacy when trialed in malaria-naïve humans, but performed disappointingly when tested in the target population for malaria vaccines: individuals living in malaria endemic regions.  Dr. Hassert seeks to understand the driving factors underlying poor immune response in endemic areas and to develop ways to circumvent these factors to elicit protective antimalarial immunity by vaccination.