Penn's bioengineered chewing gum cuts oral HPV up to 93% in lab tests

A University of Pennsylvania team led by Henry Daniell has engineered a chewing gum, derived from lablab beans, that sharply reduces microbes tied to head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. In ex vivo tests on saliva and oral-rinse samples from cancer patients, extracts from the bean gum — which carries the natural antiviral protein FRIL — lowered HPV levels by 93% in saliva and 80% in oral rinses. A version further engineered to express protegrin, an antimicrobial peptide, drove two cancer-associated bacteria, Porphyromonas gingivalis and Fusobacterium nucleatum, to near zero in a single dose.

The notable result is selectivity: the treatment knocked down harmful microbes while leaving the beneficial oral microbiome intact — a contrast with radiation therapy, which depletes helpful bacteria and can encourage Candida overgrowth. The researchers frame the gum as a potential low-cost adjuvant to existing cancer treatment or as prophylaxis to curb infection and transmission, and argue the findings support moving to clinical trials. The work was published in Scientific Reports (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-39062-w) with NIH and NCI support.

Editorial note: This is a life-sciences/oncology story with no cybersecurity, software, or technology-policy angle. It appears to have been mis-routed into a security/tech summarization pipeline. None of the allowed tags legitimately apply; the ones below are placeholders only, and this item should likely be dropped from the publication rather than published under a security tag.