Scientists Create Gum That Kills 99.97% of Cancer-Causing Bacteria

Scientists just built a chewing gum that might help prevent cancer, and it's made out of beans. Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma covers cancers of the mouth, throat, and tonsils, and two particular bacterial residents, Porphyromonas gingivalis and Fusobacterium nucleatum, keep turning up at the scene. Found in the saliva of cancer patients at roughly 1,000 times higher concentration, and they are linked to tumor progression and worse survival outcomes. So, the big question is, can you clear them out without nuking the rest of the oral microbiome? The problem though is that the molecules that could usually solve this, proteins that recognize specific bacterial surfaces, are fragile. So, swallowing them in a pill form would have our stomach acid destroy them immediately. They also have to stay within the mouth and release slowly. So, things like mouthwashes don't work here. As a result, researchers at U Penn and UCLA turned to the one consumer-grade delivery system that does work, chewing gum. The gum is made from two active ingredients. The first is a lectin harvested from jack beans. Lectins are proteins that grab onto sugar structures like the ones that sit on the surface of pathogens. In lab tests, researchers showed that this lectin bound the two bacterial strains and embedded them into the gum, and it could even capture the HPV virus, removing them when the gum was removed. The second ingredient is Protegrin 1, an antimicrobial peptide found in the white blood cells of pigs. Researchers found that it can cut holes straight through bacterial membranes, giving the gum a one-two punch. By itself, the lectin gum extract aggregated around 93% of HPV in saliva samples, and when combined with Protegrin 1, it reduced the two bacterial strains by 99. 97%. Even better, it had almost zero effect on streptococci, a beneficial oral bacteria. For patients with head and neck cancers, managing oral microbial load during and after treatment is a huge clinical challenge. A non-invasive, low-cost solution that reduces pathogen burden without wiping out the rest of the microbiome is the kind of idea with real teeth. The next step is clinical trials testing whether repeated chewing actually shifts microbial populations in patients, finally taking a bite out of cancer. If you like science that really gives you something to chew on, follow for more.