Infection with Plasmodium spps, the parasite responsible for malaria, is currently a global health crisis. Approximately 50% of the world's population lives in malaria-endemic regions, and ~1 million people die from malaria annually. While anti-malarial drugs have been effective at treating infected individuals, drug-resistance is a common problem and they do not prevent re-infection. Alternatively, an efficacious vaccine for malaria has the potential to prevent infection and lead towards the eradication of this parasite.Given the need for a malaria vaccine, my laboratory is interested in understanding both CD8 T cell and antibody responses to Plasmodium spps. Specifically, we use the murine model of malaria to determine 1) why protective immunity fails to develop following infection with Plasmodium and 2) the magnitude of Plasmodium-specific antibodies and liver stage-specific CD8 T cell responses that are required to prevent the parasite from progressing from the asymptomatic liver stage to the clinically symptomatic blood stage. Importantly, this information will aid in the rational design of a much-needed malaria vaccine.

• Superior antimalarial immunity after vaccination with late liver stage-arresting genetically attenuated parasites. *Butler NS, *Schmidt NW, Vaughan AM, Aly AS, Kappe SH, and Harty JT. Cell Host & Microbe, 2011, 9:451-462 (*Authors contributed equally.)
• Plasmodium-host interactions directly influence the threshold of memory CD8 T cells required for protective immunity. Schmidt NW, Butler NS, and Harty JT. The Journal of Immunology, 2011, 186:5873-5884
• Cutting Edge: Attrition of Plasmodium-specific memory CD8 T cells results in decreased protection that is rescued by booster immunization. Schmidt NW and Harty JT. The Journal of Immunology, 2011, 186:3836-3840
• Extreme CD8 T cell requirements for anti-malarial liver-stage immunity following immunization with radiation attenuated sporozoites. *Schmidt NW, *Butler NS, Badovinac VP, and Harty JT. PLoS Pathogens, 2010, 6:e1000998 (*Authors contributed equally.)
• CD8 T cell immunity to Plasmodium permits generation of protective antibodies after repeated sporozoite challenge. Schmidt NW, Butler NS, and Harty JT. Vaccine, 2009, 27:6103-6106
• Memory CD8 T cell responses exceeding a large, but definable threshold provide long-term immunity to malaria. Schmidt NW, Podyminogin RL, Butler NS, Badovinac VP, Tucker BJ, Bahjat KS, Lauer P, Reyes-Sandoval A, Hutchings CL, Moore AC, Gilbert SC, Hill AV, Bartholomay LC, and Harty JT. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2008, 105:14017-14022

See complete publications list at PubMed

B.S., 2001, Olivet Nazarene University

Ph.D., 2005, Indiana University

Postdoctoral Fellow, 2006-2011, University of Iowa