Chief, Laboratory of Malaria Immunology and Vaccinology
Chief, Vaccine Development Unit
Chief, Pathogenesis and Immunity Section
Education:
M.D., Duke University, Durham, NC
Biography
Dr. Duffy completed medical school at Duke University, internal medicine training at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and postdoctoral research training in molecular vaccine development at NIAID. He now leads research teams that focus on malaria pathogenesis, immunity, and vaccine development. He has extensive experience leading human observational and interventional studies of malaria, as well as mentorship of young scientists in US and Africa. Together with his LMIV colleague Dr. Michal Fried, he conducted seminal studies that revealed the mechanistic basis for placental malaria infection and protective immunity. As the Chief of the Laboratory of Malaria Immunology and Vaccinology (LMIV) at NIH, he is responsible for the intramural NIAID program to develop and test malaria vaccines in clinical trials. Under his leadership, LMIV has developed the first malaria transmission-blocking vaccines to enter field trials, has partnered with the local biotech Sanaria to conduct the first field efficacy trials of whole organism malaria vaccines, and is now pioneering a path in partnership with Mali colleagues to test the most promising malaria vaccines in pregnant women. Before taking the position at LMIV in Nov 2009, he served as Malaria Program Director at Seattle Biomedical Research Institute (now part of Seattle Children’s Research Institute), and as Affiliate Professor of Pathobiology and of Global Health at the University of Washington. In Seattle, at NIH, and in Mali, he and his partners established facilities for controlled human malaria infection (CHMI) studies with P. falciparum or P. vivax, and while at NIH, he has pioneered the use of mosquito feeding studies on human subjects as an endpoint for field trials of vaccines that will be used for malaria elimination.
Dr. Patrick E. Duffy’s research focuses on human malaria. He has decades of experience in human observational and interventional studies of malaria. As the Chief and Senior Investigator of the Laboratory of Malaria Immunology and Vaccinology (LMIV) at NIAID/NIH, he is responsible for the intramural NIAID program to develop and test malaria vaccines in humans.