Most Influential: Stefan Kappe

Kappe has developed a vaccine for malaria that works in mice and is due for trials in human volunteers early next year

Stefan Kappe [ Ph.D., Malaria Researcher, Seattle Biomedical Research Institute ]

Someday, Kappe may be able to say he’s saved millions of lives. A million people each year die of malaria, a disease caused by a parasite that travels inside mosquitoes, and Kappe, 44, has developed a vaccine for malaria that works in mice and is due for trials in human volunteers early next year. This particular malaria parasite has 5,000 genes—but only two are essential to the vaccine he designed. A native of Germany who has worked in his South Lake Union lab for about six years, Kappe came to the United States to study in the 1990s, eventually landing at New York University, where other scientists shared his passion for mixing genetics with parasites. While others studied the blood cells where the parasite spends much of its time, he chose to focus on the few days it spends in the human liver.

“I never say something can’t be done. I always say: ‘Let’s try. Let’s try,’” says Kappe.

His lab got a thrilling boost of $17 million in 2005 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for this work. “We drank champagne that day,” he says. If his vaccine works, the whole world will join his celebration.