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The developers of a universal coronavirus vaccine designed by artificial intelligence (AI) are promoting it as a solution to future pandemics. But critics question whether a single vaccine can protect against an entire family of rapidly evolving viruses. They also warn that the vaccine carries the risk of DNA contamination — and likely other unknown risks.
The vaccine’s co-developers — the University of Cambridge and its Bill Gates-linked biotech spinoff DIOSynVax — claim the results of the first clinical trials for humans show that the Sarbeco coronavirus vaccine is “safe and has no significant side-effects.”
The vaccine uses an AI-designed “super-antigen” that its developers say protects against the entire family of Sarbeco coronaviruses, which includes the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for COVID-19.
According to the researchers, the trial — which involved 39 healthy participants ages 18-50 in England — was the first successful human trial of a universal coronavirus vaccine, and the first trial of a vaccine whose active ingredient was developed entirely by AI.
In a statement, the University of Cambridge said the vaccine “triggered immune responses in the volunteers” to a range of related coronaviruses, including SARS, SARS-CoV-2 and “related bat viruses that could potentially jump from animals to humans and cause future pandemics.”
“This represents a fundamental new vaccine technology that could prevent future pandemics before they begin,” the University of Cambridge said in a statement.
In a study of the clinical trial’s results, published in the Journal of Infection, the researchers said that no serious adverse reactions were recorded during the trial and that the results show the vaccine is “safe and well tolerated.”
In all, 15 adverse events of special interest were recorded during the clinical trial, all with low severity. The study noted 121 unsolicited adverse events, 23 of which were deemed definitely, probably or possibly vaccine-related. This amounts to nearly four adverse events per trial participant.
According to the Association of Health Care Journalists, solicited adverse events are “those that the trial investigators specifically ask participants about because they are either expected or likely based on known reactions to other vaccines, such as headaches or nausea. Unsolicited adverse events are those that participants report that were not expected or previously known. An example is myocarditis, an unsolicited adverse event (no one expected it) that was reported frequently after the Covid vaccine in VAERS.”
Christof Plothe, D.O., a member of the World Council for Health steering committee, said the researchers’ announcement “demands scrutiny, not celebration.”
“The original mRNA COVID vaccines were sold with identical rhetoric — safe, effective, groundbreaking — yet they failed on their central promises. They never stopped transmission,” Plothe said.
According to the BBC, the researchers’ work “is still in the early stages,” but they are now developing “separate vaccines that could tackle flu and Ebola.”
Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said universal vaccines are unlikely to succeed.
“Vaccines already struggle with efficacy, and a non-specific vaccine will struggle even more so,” Jablonowski said. “Viruses mutate and can gain advantage. A virus in a population with ‘universal’ vaccinations can mutate to gain advantage and circumvent that ‘universal’ vaccine.”
Immunologist and biochemist Jessica Rose, Ph.D., agreed. “‘Vaccines’ against coronaviruses are pointless — see natural immunity,” she said.
Jablonowski also questioned whether Big Pharma would favor a catch-all vaccine.
“The end-all-be-all vaccine, if it works as advertised, would end a very lucrative revenue stream for Pharma. Why would Pharma shoot themselves in the foot? A new revenue stream may be found from the constant stream of boosters to the ‘universal’ vaccine,” Jablonowski said.
DNA contaminants in vaccines can lead to cancer, autoimmune issues
The Sarbeco vaccine is administered as a “DNA vaccine through a micro fluid jet” that sprays the fluid through the patient’s skin.
The researchers said DNA vaccines work by causing plasmid DNA to “penetrate the cell nucleus to be transcribed.”
Although they are less effective than mRNA vaccines at reducing disease, the researchers claim that DNA vaccines are easy to produce, store, distribute and administer as they don’t require needles.
Jablonowski said the Sarbeco vaccine technology poses a risk of DNA contamination in recipients. “What happens to cellular function when one cell gets too many plasmids?” he asked.
In 2023, researchers found that COVID-19 vaccines were contaminated with plasmid DNA from the manufacturing process, putting recipients at risk of inflammation, cancer and DNA damage that could affect their offspring.
The contaminants found in the vaccines included simian virus 40 (SV40), a cancer promoter that was not disclosed to regulators.
These findings prompted Canada’s public health agency, Health Canada, to confirm the presence of DNA plasmids in the COVID-19 shots.
In 2024, a peer-reviewed study identified the presence of DNA plasmids in Pfizer’s COVID-19 shot at levels ranging from 360 to 534 times higher than the 10 nanogram per dose limit set by regulators globally.
Another study published that year found DNA in Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines at levels three to four times higher than regulatory limits. And a study published earlier this year and partially funded by CHD found residual DNA in Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA shots, often in forms that standard testing doesn’t typically detect.
‘We cannot trust the FDA to review this for safety’
Jablonowski said regulatory agencies have not done a good job regulating the presence of DNA contaminants in vaccines.
“Pharma already does a horrible job with DNA contamination. The FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] does a horrible job keeping Pharma accountable on DNA contamination,” Jablonowski said.
Kevin McKernan, chief scientific officer and founder of Medicinal Genomics, agreed. McKernan, who helped lead several studies that identified the presence of DNA contaminants and SV40 in the COVID-19 shots, said, “We cannot trust the FDA to review this for safety as they showed quite clearly they are incapable of doing such with COVID-19 vaccines.”
“When undisclosed sequences are discovered, regulators act to cover up the problem as opposed to addressing it,” McKernan told The Defender.
This lack of disclosure may place the public at risk. Studies have shown that DNA contaminants can transfer from a pregnant woman to her fetus, and that genetic material from COVID-19 shots can integrate into the human genome, potentially triggering aggressive cancers.
Scientist: risks of needle-free DNA vaccine ‘unknown’
McKernan said the presence of plasmids in the Sarbeco vaccine is undisclosed.
“I can’t find any disclosure of the sequence of plasmid vector being used nor any data on its clearance or persistence from patients,” McKernan said. “I would not inject/tattoo anything where the plasmid sequence is not known and scrutinized by the public.”
Tattooing refers to the practice of spraying a DNA vaccine through the skin.
McKernan said that while the risk posed to the public by coronaviruses is “low,” the “risks of the plasmid tattoos are entirely unknown.”
“DNA contamination is the regulatory elephant in the room,” Plothe said. “The same manufacturing process using plasmid DNA templates means the same contamination risk applies to every batch of this new universal vaccine.”
Plothe said many of the potential adverse health effects of these vaccines — and their contaminants — are unlikely to manifest or be detected in a brief clinical trial.
“Claiming safety from such limited data for a novel AI-designed antigen delivered via a platform with known DNA contamination is scientifically dishonest.”
Plothe added:
“Phase I/II trials enrolling dozens to perhaps 100 participants over months cannot detect autoimmune conditions developing over years, oncogenic signals requiring 5-15 years to manifest, reproductive effects, or immune imprinting only apparent upon subsequent wild-type virus exposure.”
Plothe said needle-free vaccine delivery also poses potential health risks.
“Needle-free administration — whether jet injection or intranasal delivery — introduces additional risks, including direct bloodstream access bypassing lymphatic processing, and in the intranasal case, a direct pathway to the central nervous system via the olfactory nerve that bypasses the blood-brain barrier entirely,” Plothe said.
Last year, a group of scientists and researchers launched a petition urging the FDA to suspend or withdraw the mRNA COVID-19 shots, in part due to previous findings about DNA contaminants in those products.
AI models can’t predict effects of still-unknown viruses
The research team claimed that using AI to develop the Sarbeco vaccine could lead to revolutionary breakthroughs in targeting future infectious diseases.
“Vaccines developed in this way could protect against future emerging virus threats. The technology also reduces the need for frequent reformulation, which is a fundamental limitation of current vaccines,” the University of Cambridge said in its statement.
Jonathan Heeney, Ph.D., a University of Cambridge professor, head of its Lab of Viral Zoonotics and the project’s scientific lead, said in a statement that “We’ve converted vaccine development from being reactive to being future proof.”
For Plothe, though, the use of AI introduces new problems to the process of vaccine development. He said computational models “cannot predict how a never-before-seen synthetic antigen will behave in a living human immune system over years.”
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Gates Foundation linked to development of Sarbeco vaccine
The Gates Foundation is listed as one of the funders of DIOSynVax, although the level of its investment hasn’t been publicly disclosed.
In 2022, then-U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that DIOSynVax would receive $42 million to develop a universal coronavirus vaccine.
The investment was led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, widely known as CEPI, which lists the Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum among its co-founders and investors.
In 2021, CEPI announced its “100 Days Mission” to build the capability to develop a vaccine for a future pandemic within 100 days.
At least one of the researchers involved in the development of the Sarbeco vaccine disclosed links to other vaccine makers, including Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, GSK, Janssen, Merck, Novavax and Sanofi.
Plothe questioned the safety of a rapid vaccine development timeline — and the narrative claiming that a universal vaccine can prevent future pandemics.
“Media coverage insinuating that universal vaccines will prevent future lockdowns inverts reality: Lockdowns were political choices, and the proposition that we must accept experimental, AI-designed, DNA-contaminated vaccines as the price of freedom is coercive medical propaganda.
“CEPI’s 100-day mission is an explicit commitment to compressing development timelines to the point where meaningful safety assessment becomes impossible — a pipeline for medical coercion, not genuine preparedness.”
Related articles in The Defender
- Researchers Find Residual DNA in mRNA COVID Vaccines. Standard Testing Didn’t Detect It.
- DNA Contamination in Vaccines: What Is It and Why Does It Matter?
- ‘Alarm Bells’: Genetic ‘Fingerprint’ of COVID Vaccine Found in 31-Year-Old Cancer Patient’s DNA
- DNA Contamination in Pfizer COVID Vaccine Exceeded 500 Times Allowable Levels, Study Finds
- ‘An Admission of Epic Proportions’: Health Canada Confirms DNA Plasmid Contamination of COVID Vaccines
- ‘Probably the Most Important Topic of Our Time’: DNA Contaminants in COVID Shots Can Trigger Cancer, Alter Human Genome
