This post was published by Jon Fleetwood. Support him by subscribing at Substack and following at Instagram / X / Facebook.
Researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Pfizer Inc. have created new, engineered H5 bird flu influenza genetic constructs, including a codon-optimized hemagglutinin (HA) gene with a synthetically altered cleavage site, as documented in a Saturday npj Vaccines publication.
According to the authors, the stated purpose of the study was to evaluate an mRNA-based H5 vaccine, which they describe as “a nucleoside-modified mRNA construct encoding the full-length, codon-optimized HA protein with the polybasic cleavage site deleted from A/Astrakhan/3212/2020 A(H5N8).”
The paper confirms that the engineered HA used in the study was genetically modified beyond its purported natural form.
Cleavage Site Optimized
The authors state that the cleavage site was synthetically altered, writing that the polybasic amino acids were “mutated from ‘REKRRKR’ to ‘RETR’.”
The cleavage site is like a switch that must be cut to turn the flu pathogen “on” so it can infect cells, and if this site can be cut by many types of enzymes in the body, the virus can spread more and cause worse disease.
LNPs for mRNA Therapeutics
The engineered constructs were then formulated into lipid nanoparticles following “the same platform methods used for Pfizer’s COVID-19 and seasonal influenza mRNA vaccines.”
The work was conducted by multiple CDC branches, including the Influenza Division, the Division of High-Consequence Pathogens and Pathology, and the Office of Advanced Molecular Detection.
Pfizer Scientists at BSL-3 Lab
It was carried out by Pfizer scientists at the company’s Pearl River, NY facility, with additional involvement from ORISE.
The authors specify that “all research involving HPAI A(H5N1) viruses was conducted within Biosafety Level 3 enhanced (BSL-3E) or ABSL-3 facilities at the CDC.”
100% Transmission Rate
To test the performance of the engineered constructs, the CDC–Pfizer team conducted live-virus challenge experiments using human-derived H5N1 isolates.
The ferrets were infected with virus formations “A/Chile/25945/2023” and “A/Michigan/90/2024… from a farm worker exposed to infected cattle.”
Using these human isolates, the researchers documented efficient mammal-to-mammal spread, reporting a “100% transmission rate” in unvaccinated ferrets.
Funding & Conflicts of Interest
The funding disclosures indicate direct federal and corporate sponsorship.
The authors state: “This work was funded by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and by Pfizer Inc.”
The authors also disclose full corporate participation in the scientific process, writing: “Pfizer was involved in the design, analysis, and interpretation of the data in these research studies, the writing of this report, and the decision to publish.”
Additionally, the paper notes that Pfizer researchers associated with the project are “inventors on patent applications relating to influenza mRNA compositions.”
Bottom Line
The new study documents that CDC and Pfizer jointly engineered new H5 constructs through codon optimization and cleavage-site mutation, formulated them using Pfizer’s mRNA-LNP platform, and then tested them against recent human H5N1 isolates inside CDC BSL-3E laboratories.
The result is a federally backed, corporate-driven program in which U.S. authorities and Pfizer quietly engineered H5 influenza genetics and tested them with human-infecting H5N1—blurring the line between vaccine development and high-risk pathogen manipulation.
The dangerous experiments raise national security concerns.
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