Experimental study using mosquitoes to vaccinate against malaria wasn’t funded by Bill Gates

Facebook and Instagram posts shared in late December 2024 and early January 2025 claimed that the Gates Foundation funded research for a malaria vaccine that would “turn mosquitos into ‘flying syringes’ (examples here, here, here, and here). Collectively, the posts had received nearly one million interactions at the time of publication.

The origin of the claim stems from an article published by The Blaze on 30 December 2024 titled “Mosquitoes inject human test subjects with parasite in study at Bill Gates-linked center”.

This article was republished across other media outlets known for promoting disinformation and conspiracy theories, including Breitbart and The Western Journal. Posts on social media platforms subsequently shared the Breitbart and Western Journal headlines (“Researchers Funded by Bill Gates Turn Mosquitoes into ‘Flying Syringes’ to Deliver Vaccines” and “Bill Gates Plays God Again, Funds Project That Is Turning Mosquitoes Into ‘Flying Vaccinators’”, respectively).

In brief, the social media claims are the result of a distorted game of “telephone” wherein a scientific study was ultimately misrepresented in headlines by media outlets, and in turn by social media users sharing these articles.

More specifically, The Blaze‘s article claimed that researchers at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) in the Netherlands “joined an international effort to transform mosquitoes into flying syringes”. The article noted that this isn’t the first time researchers explored the idea of using mosquitoes to administer vaccines, referencing studies from Japan and the U.S. conducted in the last 15 years^[1,2].

It’s true that LUMC is currently conducting research on alternative vaccination strategies against malaria. A November 2024 study by Lamers et al. published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) tested a novel method of malaria vaccination in humans using mosquito bites to deliver a weakened version of the malaria parasite. This method is similar to that used for live-attenuated vaccines, such as the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR), varicella (chickenpox), and smallpox vaccines. Live-attenuated vaccines use a weakened form of the germ to train a person’s immune system to fight that disease without exposing them to the risk of the full-strength pathogen.

In the study, 43 participants were randomly assigned to receive bites from mosquitoes carrying either a weakened version of the parasite to counter malaria (labeled GA2), mosquitos carrying a different version of the parasite that had been previously studied (labeled GA1), or uninfected mosquitoes (labeled placebo).

After three sessions of mosquito bites, researchers tested the participants’ ability to fight off malaria. Just 20 of the original 43 participants underwent this phase of the trial. Results showed that eight of the nine people who received the GA2 vaccine were protected from malaria (89%), compared to just one of the eight people who received the GA1 vaccine (13%) and zero of three people in the placebo group (0%). Although these are very small numbers, because the GA2 vaccine showed promise in protecting against malaria, the researchers suggested it should be studied further^[3].

The study received funding from the Bontius Foundation, a Dutch nonprofit organization that provides funding for medical research and initiatives aimed at improving global health.

LUMC has also received funding from the Gates Foundation for various types of research dating back to May 2009. In November 2024, the same month the NEJM article was published, LUMC was given a grant of approximately $2.2 million to “improve health outcomes and prevent premature death in populations around the world suffering from high rates of Malaria infection by developing next generation malaria vaccine candidates“.

Grant archives from the Gates Foundation website indicate LUMC also received grants for research and development related specifically to malaria vaccines in November 2009 ($100,000) and September 2023 (roughly $1.5 million).

Thus, The Blaze’s article was correct that LUMC is a “Gates-linked center” [emphasis ours] insofar that they’ve received funding from the Gates Foundation for various projects. However, as The Blaze article was republished across other media outlets and these articles were shared across social media, the headlines describing the claim evolved to suggest that the Gates Foundation was funding research for this specific study—one which aimed to turn mosquitoes into “flying vaccinators”.

This is false. Science Feedback reached out to the authors of the study to clarify whether any part of the research was funded by the Gates Foundation. In an email on 19 January 2025, co-author Meta Roestenberg confirmed that “[t]here was no funding for this research from the [Gates Foundation], neither through Bontius Foundation nor directly. All the funding for this study came from [the] Bontius Foundation.”

For context, the concept of using mosquitoes as “vaccinators” has raised ethical concerns regarding informed consent. But scientists conducting research in this area are also accounting for these concerns. In an article published by NPR in 2022, infectious disease researchers Sean Murphy and Stefan Kappe noted that their research using mosquitoes to deliver vaccines was the first in a series of steps toward creating a stronger, syringe-based malaria vaccine. In short, the idea wouldn’t be to “use mosquitoes to vaccinate millions of people”, but rather to develop a more effective vaccine that would still allow for individual consent.

REFERENCES

• 1 – Yamamoto et al. (2010) Flying vaccinator; a transgenic mosquito delivers a Leishmania vaccine via blood feeding. Insect Molecular Biology.
• 2 – Murphy et al. (2022) A genetically engineered Plasmodium falciparum parasite vaccine provides protection from controlled human malaria infection. Science Translational Medicine.
• 3 – Lamers et al. (2024) Safety and Efficacy of Immunization with a Late-Liver-Stage Attenuated Malaria Parasite. New England Journal of Medicine.