Team

Ashley Vaughan, PhD

Ashley Vaughan, PhD, is a research assistant professor. He received his PhD from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. During his tenure in the Kappe Lab, he showed the importance of the parasite’s fatty acid synthetic pathway for sporozoite and liver stage maturation. He also researches how to elicit the most protective immune response after vaccination with genetically attenuated parasites. Ashley’s collaborations with Sebastian Mikolajczak led to significant advances in the use of human-liver chimeric mouse models in studying malaria. This includes complete liver stage development and the transition to blood stage malaria in the mouse for the human malarias Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax. He has also used this mouse model for the creation of experimental Plasmodium falciparum genetic crosses, a significant advance that should aid in our understanding of Plasmodium falciparum drug resistance. Ashley continues to be fascinated by basic parasite pre-erythrocytic biology and uses rodent malaria and parasite transgenesis to understand how the parasite interacts with its vector and host during sporozoite and liver stage development. Outside of the lab, he is a keen hiker, traveler, gardener and scuba diver, pastimes he enjoys with and without his husband, Rafael.

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