A research paper published earlier this month states that one of the researchers’ aims is to develop a vaccine to overcome vaccine hesitancy. Guy Hatchard, 20 January 2026Newly published research papers demonstrate that gain-of-function research designed to investigate the effects of deadly pathogens is still continuing. It reports the development of a self-replicating mRNA vaccine targeted at H5N1 and H7N9 viruses – so-called avian or bird flu viruses. Their results are reported in a Nature paper entitled ‘Electroporation and LNP-mediated delivery of plasmid DNA-encoded H5N1 influenza virus hemagglutinin support protection against highly pathogenic avian influenza’. They then exposed the animals to very deadly strains of the H5N1 virus to see how well their synthetic constructs functioned.