Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), used to deliver the mRNA in the COVID-19 vaccine to the body’s cells, don’t remain in the injection site — they circulate throughout the entire body and reach vital organs, including the heart, according to a new paper published in Nature Biotechnology.
The findings “suggest a potential mechanism by which LNP-based mRNA vaccines could contribute to the reported cardiac complications,” including myocarditis, the study authors wrote.
Now published in one of the top scientific journals, the study’s findings contradict claims by public health officials and scientists during the COVID-19 vaccine rollouts that the LNPs were safe because they traveled only to specific targeted sites in the body.
The authors said there is no existing adequate technology to trace where nanocarriers such as LNPs end up in the body after they are administered via intramuscular injection — especially for medication like vaccines, which contain low doses of the particles.
In this study, authors developed an experimental technology to trace where different carriers of nanoparticles, including LNPs, end up in the body after intramuscular injection. They tested the technology in mice.
The researchers found that even at extremely low doses, LNPs carrying the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein mRNA reached vital organs. It reached heart tissue and caused cellular or tissue changes.
“COVID-19 mRNA injection LNPs systemically circulate and are taken up into vital organ systems resulting in body-wide toxic Spike protein production,” epidemiologist and McCullough Foundation administrator Nicolas Hulscher wrote on Substack.
According to Children’s Health Defense Senior Scientist Karl Jablonowski, the common misconception early in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout was that the LNP “stays in the muscle cells.”
This idea was perpetuated by major publications, like Science and Open Forum Infectious Diseases — a journal funded in part by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Pfizer — even though Pfizer’s own study showed that after just 8 hours, a mere 22% of the initially injected LNPs remain at the site of injection, 18% migrated to the liver and 1% migrated to the spleen.
“This paper is an excellent example of how false that statement was, finding intramuscularly injected LNPs in the heart, liver, kidney, spleen, head, and ‘all analyzed lymph nodes,’” Jablonowski said.
Research should have been done before mass vaccination, not after
According to the study, there are over 30 new drugs — including genome editing tools, mRNA and protein drugs — approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency to treat disease.
However, drug developers face a major challenge in the clinical application of these tools — how to ensure that the drugs reach only the cells they are targeting.
To target specific cells, the drugs use “nanocarriers” — tiny particles that can carry a drug throughout the body — selected for their differential abilities to target particular cell types. There are several different types of nanocarriers, including liposomes, viral vectors and LNPs, which were used in the COVID-19 vaccine.
Nanocarriers are designed with a coating to make them stable and help them reach their target cells. However, when they are introduced into the body, they change in ways that make their intended functionality more unpredictable.
Jablonowski said this change happens because proteins bind to the nanoparticles and affect where they will go and how they interact. “This interaction with environmental proteins is inescapable and one source of critical uncertainty,” he said.
That’s what makes LNPs a risky gene therapy tool typically used only by people who are “fighting for their lives and willing to accept potential adverse effects that come from LNPs hitting the wrong target,” Jablonowski said. “A healthy person wouldn’t be likely to take that serious risk for a small possible benefit.”
The researchers set out to develop a technology, called “Single Cell Precision Nanocarrier Identification,” designed to map and quantify where nanocarriers injected into a mouse ended up.
Their technology uses machine learning to analyze image data — making it possible to precisely quantify where the nanoparticles go at the organ, tissue and single-cell level across the entire body.
They specifically designed it to measure the low doses of the medications that are usually present in vaccines. Then they tested it on several different new types of drugs and were able to successfully identify where the nanoparticles went across a mouse’s entire body.
After an LNP containing the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein mRNA was injected into the muscle, the researchers detected the mRNA and spike protein in the mice’s liver, spleen, lungs, heart, head and kidneys.
Their findings have “direct implications for clinical translation” of the drugs, they said.
“Our finding of changes in the expression of immune and vascular proteins in heart tissue after LNP spike mRNA delivery aligns with reports of myocarditis and pericarditis in a subset of individuals who received mRNA vaccines,” they wrote.
As of Dec. 27, 2024, 27,357 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis had been reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) in the U.S., with 20,846 cases attributed to Pfizer, 5,952 casesto Moderna and 482 cases to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The major limitation of the Single Cell Precision Nanocarrier Identification technology is that it cannot be used in living subjects. That means there is still no way to effectively track where LNPs go in living humans.
“This technology cannot provide the dynamic and longitudinal information that live animal methods, such as PET or bioluminescence imaging, offer,” Jablonowski said.
The study’s authors said further research is needed to determine whether similar effects occur in humans and whether the molecular changes they found across the mice’s bodies are linked to clinical symptoms.
Commenting on the authors’ statement that the likely similar effects on humans should be explored in future work, Jablonowski said:
“Every vaccine regulatory body in the world that approved LNPs for mass distribution should feel the pang of their complacent hastiness, as that yet undone ‘future work’ needed to be done well before approval.
“The U.S. has a decade-long approval process for vaccines. Of all of those that have been approved so far, none are actually safe, but the process does eliminate some of the more egregious ones. Not yet 5 years since inception, the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine platform is looking more like an egregious one.”
Hulscher agreed, writing “Biodistribution studies should have been performed BEFORE mass ‘vaccination’ of the entire world’s population.” He called for the “invasive gene therapy injections” to be pulled from the market immediately.
Related articles in The Defender:
- Case Report: Pfizer COVID Vaccine ‘Catalyst’ in Death of 34-Year-Old Man
- ‘No Real Debate’ After New Study Shows mRNA From COVID Shots Contaminates Breast Milk
- COVID Vaccines Were Never Safe for Pregnant Women, Pfizer’s Own Data Show
- Inventor of mRNA Technology: Vaccine Causes Lipid Nanoparticles to Accumulate in ‘High Concentrations’ in Ovaries
Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.
Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., is a senior reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master's from the University of Texas at Austin.